Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline [New ed.] 0198278705, 9780198278702

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Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

Title Pages (p.i) Intellectuals and the French Communist Party (p.ii) (p.iii) Intellectuals and the French Communist Party

(p.iv) This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability

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Title Pages Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Sudhir Hazareesingh 1991 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) Reprinted 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover And you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN 978–0–19–827870–2

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Acknowledgements

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

(p.v) Acknowledgements THIS book could not have been conceived (let alone executed) without considerable intellectual and material assistance. My greatest debt is to Vincent Wright, who helped to shape an earlier draft of this work into a D.Phil. thesis. It was a privilege and a delight to be supervised by him. Next, gratitude must be expressed to my D.Phil. examiners, Professor Peter Pulzer and Dr Howard Machin, who recommended the work for publication, and gave valuable advice on how to manage the delicate transition from thesis to book. Many current and former members of the PCF kindly agreed to talk about their experiences in the party. I should particularly wish to thank Charles Fiterman, Roger Martelli, Henri Malberg, Richard Lagache, and Edgar Cohen for providing valuable insights into the mentalité of the Communist intellectual. Marcelline and Marcel Rosette were generous with their time and friendship, and are owed much more than can be expressed in a few words. Unfortunately, none of the above can be held responsible for any of the limitations of this book. My initial years as a graduate student were funded by the Balliol College Anderson Trust, to which I am greatly indebted. I would also wish to express my appreciation to the Warden and Fellows of Nuffield College for electing me to a Prize Research Fellowship and for providing a stimulating intellectual environment. Last, but certainly not least, I must thank Thara and Lakhan for their loving support over the years, and, more generally, for making it all possible. S.H. Nuffield College, Oxford Page 1 of 2

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Acknowledgements 1 October 1990 (p.vi)

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Abbreviations

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

(p.viii) Abbreviations CERES Centre d'Études, de Recherches, et d'Éducation Socialistes CERM Centre d'Études et de Recherches Marxistes CGT Confédération Générale du Travail EEC European Economic Community ENA École Nationale d'Administration FEN Fédération de l'Éducation Nationale IEP Institut d'Études Politiques IMT Institut Maurice Thorez INSEE Institut National des Statistiques et des Études Économiques IRM Institut de Recherches Marxistes LCR Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire MLF Mouvement de Libération de la Femme MPLA Mouvement Populaire pour la Libération d'Angola PCE Parti Communiste Espagnol Page 1 of 2

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Abbreviations PCF Parti Communiste François PCI Parti Communiste Italien PS Parti Socialiste RATP Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens RCH Rencontres Communistes hebdo SFIO Section Française de l'lnternationale Ouvrière SNCF Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer SOFRES Société Française d'Enquête par Sondages

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals Sudhir Hazareesingh

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the origins of the growing political marginalization of the French Communist Party (PCF), particularly the decline in intellectual affiliation to the party. The decline of the long tradition of French intellectual identification with the PCF started in the 1980s. In the twenty-fifth Congress in February 1985, a final resolution was passed that omitted the traditional reference to the party's alliance with French intellectuals. The decline in the party's ability to attract the support of intellectuals is attributed to the serious electoral decline suffered by the party between 1978 and 1989. Keywords:   French Communist Party, French intellectual, political marginalization, political parties, electoral decline

IN December 1989 the issue of the principal political review of the French Communist Party was emblazoned with a bold headline: ‘Un Parti Communiste et des militants offensifs avec optimisme’.1 The depiction of the condition of the party in these terms was a characteristic piece of Communist extravagance. In reality, the decade which was ending had been nothing short of calamitous for the fortunes of French Communism. Once the premier parti de France, the PCF appeared to have charted a firm course towards political oblivion in the 1980s. An especially cruel blow was the precipitous collapse of Leninist regimes in Eastern Europe between 1989 and 1990. In the past, when domestic events took a disobliging turn, Communist militants could console themselves by engaging in Page 1 of 15

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals spiritual communion with the socialist countries, where, as the French party leaders repeatedly affirmed, the main social and political aspirations of the communist movement had been achieved. As late as December 1987 the final resolution of the PCF's twenty-sixth Congress had categorically emphasized the primacy of the Soviet and East European social systems over the West. ‘Ainsi, alors que le capitalisme s'enfonce partout dans la crise, le socialisme ouvre une nouvelle période de son histoire. L'antagonisme entre capitalisme et socialisme commence à se poser en termes nouveaux. Le socialisme se donne les moyens de faire la démonstration qu'il est bien une organisation sociale supérieure.’2 Two years later the fall of the Berlin Wall heralded the impending demise of Leninism in many East European countries. (p.2) Furthermore, the end of Soviet domination also appeared to invalidate the optimistic assumption that history was moving in the Communists' direction. Thus, the PCF's isolation was almost complete. After Communist candidate André Lajoinie's dismal performance in the 1988 presidential elections, even the Soviet Communist Party chided its French comrades for failing to adapt to the new socio-economic realities of the modern era. As the political commentator of Izvestia declared sternly: ‘The [French] Communists have neither a programme nor even a slogan which could appeal to wider popular masses. Their strategy and tactics are completely outdated in relation to the new conditions created by the perestroika of modern capitalism.’3 This book will explore the origins of one important aspect of the PCF's growing political marginalization: the decline in intellectual affiliation to the party. The 1980s witnessed the end of a long tradition of French intellectual identification with the PCF. At the party's twenty-fifth Congress in February 1985, this break with the past was officially recognized: the final resolution omitted the traditional reference to the party's ‘alliance’ with French intellectuals. Held up to the party faithful as the privileged partner of the working class at the PCF's previous Congress only three years earlier,4 the intellectuals were discreetly dropped from the Communist discours. A rapid inspection of the conference hall on the Île-Saint-Denis provided an immediate impression of this change. In the 1970s party Congresses had been attended by personalities from the artistic, scientific, and literary community. In 1985 the party failed to find a single public figure who agreed to attend the proceedings. In fact, a glance at the occupations of the delegates showed that, with the exception of a solid cohort of primary and secondary schoolteachers intellectual professions were generally in rather scant supply.5 For an organization which had regarded itself as the parti de l'intelligence, the PCF appeared to have come a long way indeed. Despite an uneasy and often tumultuous relationship with this social stratum, the PCF's general record in attracting (if not always (p.3) retaining) the support of intellectuals had been extremely impressive: why had the twenty-fifth Congress buried this historical Page 2 of 15

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals association, which had reflected the successful conversion of generations of French intellectuals to the communist ideal?

The Effects of Decline The answer to this question is relatively straightforward. The PCF had suffered a severe haemorrhage of its intellectual membership since 1980, and was, furthermore, simply no longer capable of appealing to the broader community of French intellectuals. The primary object of this book will be to trace the principal causes of the first phenomenon, although many of its conclusions are also relevant to the explanation of the second. The principal subjects of this investigation, however, are the Communist intellectuals who, for complex reasons which will subsequently be disentangled, decided to abandon their affiliation to the PCF after conducting an arduous political and ideological battle with the party leadership after 1978. Before addressing the causes, a closer scrutiny of the effects of this process will be appropriate. It would, after all, be singularly unwise to embark upon such a journey without first ascertaining its precise nature and purpose. This is all the more necessary in that, were the PCF authorities to be believed, there was no problem requiring serious explanation. Between 1980 and 1985 the Communist leadership repeatedly affirmed that there was no internal crisis in the PCF, and that the level of intellectual support for the party had remained unchanged since the late 1970s.6 It needs to be established, therefore, that the problem identified is not purely a figment of the imagination. The slump in intellectual support for the PCF, as well as the more general decline in the party's intellectual appeal, may be illustrated from five different perspectives. A party without object

The most immediate indication of the PCF's fragility emerges from a rapid survey of the party's electoral performances between 1978 and 1989. (p.4) Whatever the index chosen to analyse the results, the verdict is quite categorical: the PCF suffered a serious electoral decline over this period, and this trend was confirmed by the party's growing inability to retain its power bases at local level, as the results of the municipal elections of March 1989 demonstrated. In absolute terms, the PCF suffered a dramatic loss of popular support during the 1980s. In the legislative elections of March 1978 the party captured 5.87 million votes; in the European elections of June 1989 the Communist list won the suffrage of 1.37 million voters.7 In other words, more than two Communist voters out of every three had deserted the party over this period. This decline is confirmed by an examination of the regional distribution of its electoral support. In the 1970s the PCF's representation across the 96 metropolitan departments was still respectable. The 86 Communist deputies elected in 1978 represented 33 departments, concentrated in 4 main areas: the Page 3 of 15

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals industrial triangle at the northern tip of the hexagon, the ‘red crescent’ around Paris, the (predominantly rural) northern and western parts of the Massif Central, and southern departments on the Mediterranean coast. During the 1980s the geographical bases of the PCF's support narrowed considerably, and the party lost its character as a national political force. The 24 Communist parliamentarians elected in 1988 represented only 11 departments; the party won less than 10 per cent of the vote in more than two-thirds of the 96 metropolitan departments.8 The direct consequence of this very rapid and apparently irreversible process was a general perception that that PCF had ceased to matter as a social and political force. In an obvious sense, this could be inferred as the verdict of the electorate. This decreasing significance of the PCF was also corroborated by surveys of public opinion in the 1980s.9 More specifically, this sentiment was also reflected in the perceptible marginalization of the party in the French intellectual community. As an object of analysis and understanding, the PCF found it increasingly difficult to (p.5) command any significant measure of attention. Newspapers and journals devoted less space to the party in their columns, and the scholarly community produced fewer monographs on the organization. Even the polemicists, who had achieved instant success in the 1970s by denouncing the péril communiste, were now forced to turn their attention to other incarnations of Evil. Clearly, the party had lost its enduring ability to fascinate and terrify. It was as if l'homme au couteau entre les dents had been found to be wearing dentures. A party without prestige

A more specific indicator of the party's problems was, as mentioned earlier, the PCF's growing inability to attract the support of creative intellectuals from the artistic, scientific, and literary world. Before each major election the PCF traditionally circulated an appel au vote communiste among these public figures, and the response of these intellectuals could be taken as some gauge of the party's status in that community. A rapid examination of the appels published in the Communist Party press between 1978 and 1984 provides a striking picture of the party's collapse in this milieu. Before the legislative elections of March 1978 the party's ‘prestige count’ was still quite considerable. In February and March L'Humanité published the names of more than 500 public figures who appealed for a Communist vote, including household names from the world of cinema (Gérard Depardieu, Stéphane Audran, Claude Chabrol) and music (Germaine Tailleferre, Georges Delerue, Marc Ogeret).10 Over the following six years, however, there was a sharp decline in the party's ability to attract the support of creative intellectuals. This could be seen in three ways. First, the appeals published before the elections of 1979, 1981, and 1984 contained progressively fewer names, and within each the proportion of public figures diminished at every election. Thus, the appel Page 4 of 15

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals published in the party press before the European elections of 1984 contained fewer than 300 signatures in total, with the almost complete absence of public personalities.11 Following directly from this first point, the lists contained fewer (p.6) outside figures, and thus became increasingly dominated by intellectuals who were already members of the PCF. This obviously perverted the original purpose of these appels, which was to test the party's wider appeal to intellectuals who were not normally associated with the PCF's activities. Finally, the party authorities sought to compensate for their qualitative inadequacy by broadening the criteria used for defining intellectuals. This transparently fraudulent attempt to disguise the PCF's rejection by creative intellectuals was particularly in evidence during the presidential election campaign of 1981. In March 1981, for example, L'Humanité published an appeal signed by 500 Parisian ‘intellectuals’: these included a sizeable contingent of hospital workers and trade-unionists.12 The PCF leaders may well have thought that qu'importe le flacon, pourvu qu'on ait l'ivresse; the process described above, none the less, demonstrates that public personalities of the French intellectual word became increasingly reticent to lend their prestige to the party in the 1980s. A party without legitimacy

After 1980 a third aspect of the party's problems consisted of the constant strife which opposed the party leadership and Communist intellectuals, both inside and outside the PCF. The external problem was a direct consequence of the intra-party dispute of 1978–80. As a result of their failure to reform the PCF from within, a significant number of intellectual contestataires formed associations and pressure groups to continue the struggle for political change from without. The leadership of these organization (Rencontres Communistes, Union dans les Luttes, Centre d'Études Marxistes and Convention Communiste) was primarily recruited from the circle of intellectual activists who had played an important public role in earlier intra-party dispute. The achivements of these splinter groups were minimal. Henri Fiszbin, the President of Rencontres Communistes, was elected to Parliament on the Socialist Party slate in 1986, and the movement eventually merged with the PS13 in 1988. The very existence of these movements, none the less, provides a telling indication of the extent to (p. 7) which even communist (as distinct from Marxist) intellectuals no longer considered the PCF as the exclusive and legitimate bearer of the identité communiste in France. The 1980s also witnessed the further development of internal dissent at the highest echelons of the party organization. In 1987–8, for example, the (departmental) committee of the Doubs elected Martial Bourquin as the First Secretary of the local Communist Federation. The central party authorities refused to ratify this decision, on the grounds that Bourquin was ‘opposed’ to the current party line.14 This breakdown of the internal consensus within the Page 5 of 15

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals PCF was generally illustrated by the fate of intellectuals who remained inside the party after 1980. Rather than discuss the role of intellectuals in specific oppositional currents such as the Rénovateurs, Reconstructeurs and Refondateurs, the fortunes of the former Communist ministers in the Mauroy government between 1981 and 1984 could be singled out. Held up to the party faithful as paradigms of moral, political, and intellectual excellence during their period in office, these four party dignitaries gradually fell out of favour with the Marchais leadership after the PCF's departure from government. There were three basic reasons for their marginalization within the party. Symbolically, they embodied the defunct strategy of Union de la Gauche, which had been abandoned by the party leadership after 1984. At a substantive level, the former ministers did not support the new course charted by the PCF after its exit from the Socialist government and, thus, increasingly publicized their opposition to the Marchais leadership. Finally, and independently of their own political ambitions, they constituted a focal point for the emergence of an alternative to the Marchais leadership. As a result, these four intellectuals were isolated in the party, and were humiliatingly denied the title of ancien ministre at the PCF's twenty-sixth Congress15 in December 1987. By 1990 the former Communist ministers had become virtual dissidents in their own party. Thus former Transport Minister Charles Fiterman attacked the party authorities' inherent belief in their political and intellectual superiority: ‘le Parti se croit toujours détenteur d'une vérité révélée’.16 More generally, it was difficult not to notice that the purges (p.8) which decimated the ranks of the internal opposition to the Marchais leadership after 1984 were aimed, above all, at the few intellectuals who remained in the instances dirigeantes of the PCF: figures such as Pierre Juquin and Claude Llabres (expelled in 1987), Claude Poperen and Félix Damette (removed from the Central Committee in 1987). The Marchais leadership was able to survive the internal and external challenges to its authority in the 1980s. None the less, the intellectuals who directed these scattered and quixotic assaults against the fortress at the Place du Colonel Fabien illustrated the extent to which the PCF authorities suffered from a lack of political legitimacy, even in the eyes of Communist apparatchiks. A party without influence

Furthermore, the PCF's predicament in the 1980s was evident in its growing inability to mobilize discontented sectors of the French population around the ideas and policies proposed by the party. The constellation of satellite Communist organizations, which had once kept the PCF in close contact with the sentiments of aggrieved peasants, ex-servicemen, and council tenants, was clearly running out of energy by the end of the 1970s. There were two relative exceptions to this general trend. The powerful Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) still remained a major force in the labour unions, although its Page 6 of 15

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals membership continued to decline in the 1980s.17 Furthermore, the sizeable proCommunist current in the largest teachers' union, the Fédération de l'Éducation Nationale (FEN), sustained a considerable level of influence in the movement. Elsewhere, however, the PCF's capacity to reflect and direct social movements appeared to be on the wane. This phenomenon was well reflected in the decline of Communist satellite organizations specifically directed at intellectuals. Perhaps the most compelling indication of the PCF's sclerosis in this area was provided by the gradual extinction of a species which had hovered on the fringes of the Communist movement since the 1920's: the fellow-traveller. As Chapter 3 will show, the party had once been able to command the attention of a sizeable proportion of the French intellectual community, particularly (p.9) over issues centring on defence and foreign policy. From this perspective, the faltering role of the French peace movement in the 1980s clearly symbolized the hiatus between French Communism and its compagnons de route. The French Mouvement de la Paix was initially not unsuccessful in rallying noncommunist intellectual support around PCF-inspired campaigns. In October 1981, for example, an appel against the American neutron bomb was published in Le Monde.18 The organizer of the petition, Charles Lederman, was a Communist member of the Senate, and many of the signatories were PCF members and sympathizers who had publicly expressed support for Georges Marchais's candidacy in the presidential elections a few months earlier.19 In striking contrast to the presidential campaign, however, the appeal against the neutron bomb was signed by more than thirty public personalities from the scientific, artistic, and literary communities, including the writer Edmonde Charles-Roux (femme de lettres, and wife of Socialist Minister of the Interior Gaston Defferre), the actor Jean-Louis Trintignant, and the producer Claude Lelouch.20 After 1980, the Mouvement de la Paix also attempted to mobilize French intellectuals against the NATO decision to deploy Cruise and Pershing II missiles in Europe. Again, the initial response was encouraging, with signatories extending well beyond the traditional boundaries of partisan commitment: the names of former party members such as Catherine Clément, Édouard Pignon, and Antoine Vitez, as well as the historian Alain Decaux, were present alongside the usual PCF figures.21 Yet this surge of compagnonnage de route soon foundered on serious obstacles. Firstly, President Mitterrand made it plain that the campaigns of the peace movement were incompatible with the principles of French foreign policy. Socialist party members and sympathizers soon disaffiliated from the activities of the PCF (p.10) front, and most intellectuals followed suit. In any case, the PCF was not in a position to exploit the wave of pacificism to the full, because of its participation in the Mauroy government. In the Cold War era the PCF had been able to allow the peace movement to mobilize intellectuals, before Page 7 of 15

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals subsequently stepping in to rally the campaigners around the broader political ideas of the party. Between 1981 and 1984, however, the PCF was unable to benefit from this inducting capacity of the peace movement, because it could not afford—solidarité gouvernementale oblige—to step out of line with the Socialists.22 In the longer term, however, even if the PCF had not been fettered by its obligations towards the Socialists, it was extremely unlikely that the campaign of the peace movement could have sustained its initial momentum for very long. The reason for this was clear: French intellectuals were no longer willing to rally to the injunctions of a movement whose principal political objectives appeared to be issued directly from the Kremlin. In his memoirs, published in 1985, the dissident Communist Pierre Juquin caused a considerable stir by revealing that the PCF leadership (of which he was a member) had formally consulted its Soviet counterpart on the line to be adopted on the Euromissiles question.23 In the late 1980s, as the movement towards European demilitarization was accelerated, the question of disarmament also became less salient. The fellowtraveller had lost his traditional raison d'être, in the same way as the PCF, more generally, had lost its capacity to mobilize intellectuals. A party without appeal

The political and institutional fragmentation of French Communism in the 1980s naturally had adverse repercussions on the intellectual appeal of the PCF. It was hardly surprising, for example, that intellectuals who rejected the party's political line also disagreed with much of the PCF's intellectual production (particularly given the strict dependence of the latter on the former). In (p.11) broad terms, the overwhelming rejection of the party's, intellectual output during the 1980s stemmed from pressures which came from three distinct directions. Firstly, there was simply less to discard. As a result of financial pressures which were centrally (but not exclusively) determined by the party's political and institutional decline, the standard of its lowest intellectual production reached its lowest point since the establishment of the PCF as a mass party in the 1930s.24 This contraction was most immediately apparent in the reduction of the number of Communist newspapers and journals in metropolitan France, but it could also be seen in the diminishing output of the party publishing house, the Éditions Sociales, as well as the acute difficulties faced by smaller cultural ventures which depended on the PCF's munificence, such as the record company Le Chant du Monde.25 Furthermore, the intellectual output of the PCF in the 1980s was increasingly rejected by what might be termed its immediate catchment area: the circle of party members, sympathizers, fellow-travellers, and assorted devotees whose attention the PCF had been able to claim until the late 1970s. The falling Page 8 of 15

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals circulation of party newspaper L'Humanité was probably the most obvious indicator of this phenomenon: between 1979 and 1982, for example, sales in the Parisian region fell by around 20 per cent. In 1980 the party launched a new journal specifically directed at intellectuals: according to initial estimates, Révolution was expected to average weekly sales of 150,000 copies.26 Two years later, however, the journal was struggling to reach the figure of 25,000.27 The party research centre, the Institut de Recherches Marxistes (IRM), also showed signs of the malaise affecting the party's intellectual output during this period. After 1981 the Institute revived for a short while (which broadly coincided with the duration of the party's brief état de grâce in France), before reverting to the state of torpor which had characterized the first two years of its existence. By 1985 the IRM could only nominally be described as an intellectual centre, organizing occasional public (p.12) meetings which even the party faithful attended with the greatest reluctance. Ultimately, however, the problem went far deeper than the two issues raised above. The rejection of the PCF's output was linked to a wider process of evolution in the French political and intellectual community in the 1980s, which saw the steady but inexorable decline of traditional ideas and assumptions held by the Left. The redefinition of the nature and purpose of political commitment by radical intellectuals widened the gap which separated them from the PCF. The new values which were now à la mode on the Left Bank (belief in the practical virtues of the market, moral relativism, and scepticism towards ideological systems) were totally out of step with traditional Communist discourse, which remained embedded in the pre-lapsarian universe of moral and political absolutism. The ideological isolation of the party, therefore, was accentuated by this wider rejection of social and political values which had once been the common intellectual stock of the entire Left. In the late 1980s this marginalization of the PCF was compounded by the leadership's dogged refusal to face up to the consequences of the demise of Leninism. Nowhere was this lag in political consciousness more forcefully underlined than in the contrast with the Italian Communists' reaction to the momentous events in Eastern Europe. The PCI seized upon the revolutions of 1989–90 to launch a thorough and probing investigation of its very identity as a political movement. The French Communist authorities scornfully rejected such existential debates, and explicitly disavowed the claim that the demise of authoritarian Communism had any political implications for the PCF. As Marcel Rigout, a former minister declared: ‘Le drame du PCF, c'est de vouloir continuer à vivre bardé de certitudes … Nous ne pouvons échapper à ce constat: le socialisme bureaucratique et étatique est un écbec complet.’28

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals A Decaying Institution Despite the indignant and increasingly desperate denials issued by the PCF authorities, it was manifest that the party's standing (p.13) in the French intellectual community had declined considerably by the mid-1980s. The signes de pauvreté extérieure were overwhelming: as has been noted, the party was regarded as an irrelevance by the political community; its level of support among creative intellectuals was virtually non-existent; it was overwhelmingly rejected even by intellectuals who still described themselves as Communists; its ideological output was repudiated, when it was not simply ignored; it was hardly even capable of mobilizing disaffected social groups on specific political issues. This book will seek to explain the origins of one aspect of this generalized institutional decline: the disaffiliation of French intellectuals from the PCF after 1978. It will be argued that the intra-party dispute of 1978–80 brought to the surface a number of underlying tensions in the Communist intellectuals' attachment to the PCF. The critics of the party leadership initially confronted (and overcame) these problems by relying on a deep-seated sense of optimism. This feeling was immediately inspired by the expectation that their demands for internal party reform would be met, but it was also based on a deeper philosophical assumption that the PCF was empowered by history to play a decisive role in the transformation of French society. These high hopes were first undermined by the outcome of the intra-party dispute, which witnessed the overwhelming rejection of the intellectuals' agenda for the PCF's aggiornamento. The anxiety of Communist intellectuals was heightened by the party's endorsement of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which seemed to suggest that the PCF leadership was no longer interested in playing an active part in the transformation of French society. During the 1980s this feeling turned into widespread disillusionment, compounded by the failure of the French socialist experiment to achieve its professed goals of radical social and economic change. In the late 1980s, as Communism appeared to be threatened with extinction across the European continent, the optimistic underpinning of the materialist conception of history was also swept away. The argument of this book will unfold in three sections. First, there will be an assessment of the position of intellectuals in French public life during the twentieth century, before exploring the sources of intellectual affiliation to the party. Secondly, the inherent tensions engendered by attempts to reconcile conflicting (p.14) values and objectives, and the elements of continuity which enabled intellectuals to overcome these tensions, will be examined. Finally, the main factors which determined the breakdown of this equilibrium in the late 1970s and the 1980s will be identified. Some of the basic themes arising in the narrative are outlined in the following sections.

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals Roots of affiliation

The sources of intellectual affiliation to the PCF have been the object of considerable scholarly attention, as will be noted in Chapter 2. It will be suggested that a plurality of considerations underlay the affiliation of intellectuals to the party. From a historical perspective, the appeal of the Bolshevik revolution, and the subsequent foundation of a Leninist political system in the Soviet Union, acted as a magnetic force which attracted several generations of French intellectuals into the Communist Party. Internationalist empathy was by no means the only conduit towards Communism, however. Many intellectuals joined the PCF on the basis of their social, philosophical, and political identification with the working class. This social group embodied the qualities of moral, political, and intellectual excellence in the eyes of the French Left as a whole until the 1960s, after which this conception became increasingly restricted to Communist intellectuals. The role of Marxism, both as a philosophy of history and a guide for practical political action, was also central to the conversion of several generations of intellectuals to the ideals of Communism: the optimistic goals of the Marxian vision of the future, which would be realized in part through the revolutionary agency of the PCF, presented many French intellectuals with a coherent basis for their praxis. Finally, it will be argued that the PCF's Leninist organizational structure provided a framework for significant and effective goal-directed action, and, therefore, represented a strong attraction to intellectuals who sought to give a concrete edge to their moral and political principles. Conflicting values

Each of these dimensions of intellectual identification with French Communism generated severe tensions between different (and, at (p.15) times, inherently irreconcilable) beliefs and principles. Political and emotive affinities with the Soviet Union and the international communist movement clashed with a vision of the PCF as the embodiment of a revolutionary tradition which was distinctively French. One aspect of this tension between universalism and particularism which will not be developed further is worthy of mention here. After 1945 Communist intellectuals often presented themselves as the zealous guardians of French culture against the rising tide of American barbarity. This particularist conception of culture was also coupled with a firm adhesion to the Soviet principles of ‘socialist realism’, which were based on the (presumed) aesthetic tastes of the proletariat.29 In other words, Communist intellectuals were committed to a national conception of artistic value, which made no distinction between social classes, and, at the same time, a universal standard for defining cultural goods, which explicitly distinguished between a ‘bourgeois’ and a ‘proletarian’ conception of culture. This contradiction was superficially resolved when the PCF abandoned its unconditional attachment to the principles of

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals ‘socialist realism’ in the 1960s, but the underlying tension between a class-based and a national conception of culture remained. A number of other equally important internal conflicts will be explored in the chapters which follow. During the 1970s there was an increasing tension between the Communist intellectuals' identification with the millennial vision of Marxism, which was based on an optimistic conception of historical development, and a growing strain of pessimism about the value of partisan commitment. This conflict remained essentially unarticulated until the outbreak of the intra-party dispute in 1978, which brought it into the open for the first time. Furthermore, the prevailing conception of the working class as an embodiment of social and political excellence clashed with a growing desire, on the part of intellectuals, to underscore their distinctive identity in the party. In this sense, the central role played by intellectuals in the intra-party dispute of 1978–80 was an expression of self-assertion, although it will be argued that this sentiment did not seriously undermine their fetishistic identification (p.16) with the working class. There was a further dimension to this contradiction. Intellectuals were the bearers of a relatively high level of culture, and yet they willingly joined a political organization which often rejected many aspects of the humanist tradition. Perhaps even greater was the paradox which saw intellectuals identify with a social class whose level of education and conception of culture had almost nothing in common with their own. Finally, the Leninist organizational mores of the PCF presented party members with a number of dilemmas, which surfaced in the arguments raised during the intra-party dispute of 1978–80. Many intellectuals accepted the orthodox Leninist assumption that the political effectiveness of the party required a high degree of internal cohesion. This requirement, in turn, dictated a system of internal organization which accorded significantly greater value to the principle of centralization than to the practice of democracy. At the same time, however, intellectuals blamed the party leadership for failing to introduce a greater element of pluralism in the PCF. This attempt to reconcile conflicting values was a telling indication of the tensions which were inherent in the intellectuals' identification with the party. How these tensions were overcome

There were a variety of factors which enabled Communist intellectuals to overcome many of these contradictions, even until the final stages of the intraparty dispute in the late 1970s. Some problems, such as the relationship between national and class-based conceptions of culture, and the connection between the PCF's nationalism and its traditional internationalist sympathies,

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals were either ignored altogether (as in the former case) or only belatedly identified. One standard type of reconciliation took the form of a victory of tradition over innovation. In other words, faced with a choice between retaining their old values and assumptions and exploring the implications of new ideas, the critical intellectuals eventually preferred the former. This was the way in which the conflict between the intellectuals' self-assertion and their veneration of the working class was resolved. Similarly, the practical implications (p.17) of the idea of pluralism were overriden by the strategic imperative of internal cohesion. More fundamentally, however, it will be claimed that the intellectuals' decision to remain in the party was dictated by a compelling identification with the political objectives of the PCF, based on a prevailing sentiment that radical social change was not only desirable and achievable, but also inevitable. Even during the initial phases of the intra-party dispute many critics were still driven by this underlying sense of optimism. This feeling was derived from a basic (and almost simplistic) understanding of historical materialism, but also, in part, from a strong belief in the justice of their more immediate claims against the party leadership. Ultimately, none of the intellectuals could initially have even conceived of continuing their political struggle in any organization other than the PCF. These considerations clearly helped the intellectuals to rationalize their continuing membership of the party until 1980. The breakdown: intellectual disaffiliation

The sense of optimism which pervaded the counter-community was first undermined by the outcome of the intra-party dispute, which saw the rejection of the rebels' basic demands for structural reform, intellectual autonomy, and a more active role in the internal decision-making process. This initial disillusionment was compounded by the PCF's response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Although it will be argued that the party's attitude to this question was consistent with its overall appreciation of Soviet foreign policy, the PCF's response was interpreted by party intellectuals as a return to a policy of strategic alignment with the Soviet Union. This triggered an initial wave of resignations from the party, which was amplified in the years which followed. The Afghanistan issue confirmed the intellectuals' suspicion that the PCF could not be reformed from within, but also suggested that the party was no longer interested in political change in France. The Communist leadership was unable to arrest the decline in intellectual identification with the PCF after 1981, despite the party's participation in the Mauroy government between 1981 and 1984. This growing intellectual isolation was accelerated by (p.18) the radical realignment of left-wing intellectuals in Page 13 of 15

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals France after 1983, the main effect of which was to drive an even greater wedge between the PCF and the non-communist Left. By the late 1980s the PCF's timorous response to the collapse of Leninism in Eastern Europe attested to the complete ideological bankruptcy of Communism in France. Notes:

(1) See Cahiers du communisme, Dec. 1989. (2) ‘Résolution du Vingt-Sixième Congrès’, Cahiers du communisme, Dec. 1987, p. 371. (3) Quoted in Le Nouvel Observateur, 6–12 May 1988. (4) See Georges Marchais, ‘Rapport au Comité Central’, Cahiers du communisme, Feb.–Mar. 1982, pp. 47–8. (5) See ‘Rapport de la Commission des Mandats’, Cahiers du communisme, Mar.– Apr. 1985, pp. 302. (6) See e.g. the declaration by Georges Marchais in L'Humanité, 6 Dec. 1983. (7) For 1978 results, see special issue of Cahiers du communisme: ‘Élections législatives, mars 1978’, 46; for 1989, see Le Figaro, 20 June 1989. (8) See analysis of the results in Le Monde, 14 June 1988. (9) See opinion poll on declining confidence in the PCF's capacity to act as a ‘party of government’, in SOFRES, Opinion publique 1986 (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), 48; and the collapse of the PCF's popularity ratings between 1981 and 1988, in SOFRES, L'État de l'opinion 1989 (Paris: Seuil, 1989), 156. (10) See the issues of 16 Feb., 9 Mar., and 10 Mar. 1978. (11) See L'Humanité, 24 May 1984. (12) Ibid. 28 Mar. 1981. (13) See Est—Ouest, Dec. 1988, p. 31; and Henri Fiszbin, ‘Plus d'individualisme et pourtant plus de solidarité’, Nouvelle revue socialiste, 6 (Sept. 1989), 95–103. (14) See Le Monde, 8 Jan. 1988. (15) See L'Humanité, 7 Dec. 1987. (16) In Le Nouvel Observateur, 15–21 Feb. 1990. (17) See estimated figures for CGT membership between 1981 and 1985 in Communisme, 13 (1987), 124.

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Introduction: The Withering Away of Communist Intellectuals (18) See Le Monde, 22 Oct. 1981. (19) See e.g. L'Humanité, 16 and 17 Apr. 1981; and Révolution, 24 Apr. 1981. (20) One of the signatories was the film producer Claude Autant-Lara, whose political affiliations changed quite dramatically during the decade. A fellowtraveller in the early 1980s, he finished as an elected member of the European Parliament on the Front National list in June 1989. He was forced to resign his seat in Sept. 1989, in the wake of a public outcry which followed his anti-Semitic declarations. (21) See L'Humanité, 16 June 1982. (22) Hence Georges Marchais's repeated declarations to the effect that the PCF had no basic disagreements with the French government over foreign policy issues. See e.g. his statement in L'Humanité, 21 Nov. 1983. (23) See Pierre Juquin, Autocritiques (Paris: Grasset, 1985), 217–18. (24) With the obvious exception of the period between 1939 and 1944. (25) See L'Humanité, 1 June 1982. (26) See Le Nouvel Observateur, Mar. 1980. (27) See Bruno Voisin, ‘La Presse communiste malade de la politique du parti’, Presse-Actualité, 162 (Mar. 1982), 38. (28) In an interview to Le Nouvel Observateur, Jan. 1990; emphasis added. (29) See Irwin M. Wall, French Communism in the Era of Stalin (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1983), 128–9.

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Intellectuals and Politics in France

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

Intellectuals and Politics in France Sudhir Hazareesingh

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses the historical origins and underlying justifications for the involvement of French intellectuals in public political activity. It shows that the specific context that gave rise to the concept of the intellectual in France in the late 19th century included public participation in political life as its defining characteristic. The chapter examines the relationship between intellectuals and the French state, and suggests that these two bodies were close intertwined throughout the modern era. It also explains that the parameters of intellectual activity were influenced by concerns and interests of public authority. Keywords:   intellectuals, France, political activity, public authority, politics

THE historical origins and underlying justifications of the involvement of French intellectuals in public political activity constitute the principal theme of this chapter. It will be shown that the specific context which gave birth to the concept of the intellectual in France in the late nineteenth century included public participation in political life as a defining characteristic of the phenomenon. Thus, from the very outset, productive intellectual practice was conceived as an activity which went beyond the pursuit of narrow scholastic aims. In an important sense, therefore, to be a French intellectual was to subscribe to a wider set of public practices and values. In the course of the twentieth century these norms crystallized into a distinct tradition, a central element of which was later captured in the Sartrian concept of engagement.

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Intellectuals and Politics in France This outline will be preceded by an attempt to conceptualize the relationship between intellectuals and the French state. It will be argued that these two bodies remained closely intertwined throughout the modern era. The parameters of intellectual activity were influenced, both directly and indirectly, by the interests and concerns of public authority. Intellectuals, on the other hand, did not remain indifferent to the attentions of the state. Many ideological and occupational groups reacted negatively to the pressures of the authorities. Furthermore, the state itself was penetrated by various intellectual strata. Thus, the nature of this relationship provides an essential key to understanding the character of intellectual involvement in French public life. Before these arguments are explored, two traditional conceptions of intellectual activity will be identified. In this context, it will become clear why neither of these conventional approaches could provide a useful point of departure for this enquiry.

(p.20) The Concept of Intelligentsia The first concept to be considered under this heading is the related but culturally specific notion of the intelligentsia. The origins of this concept are a matter of some dispute between historical sociologists. It has been variously claimed that the term initially emerged in nineteenth-century Poland1 and Russia.2 Two French political historians attempted to resolve this etymological dispute by stipulating that the concept was conceived in France, during the Enlightenment.3 Despite this disagreement over origins, there is a basic consensus with regard to the substantive political significance of the term. In Isaiah Berlin's words, members of the intelligentsia ‘conceived themselves as being a dedicated order, almost a secular priesthood, devoted to the spreading of a specific attitude to life’.4 In the modern era, however, the emphasis on these particular moral and political traits has been progressively abandoned, and the distinction between intelligentsia and intellectual has become correspondingly blurred. In the Soviet Union, for example, a sufficient condition for inclusion in the intelligentsia has consisted of the ability to engage in ‘complex mental work requiring specialized higher or secondary education’.5 In France the two concepts are increasingly treated as synonymous. Membership of the intelligentsia, as of the intellectual community, is often simply regarded as a function of distinctive educational and occupational attributes.6 More specifically, there is a tendency to define an intelligentsia as a collectivity of intellectuals sharing a common ideological, occupational, or even spatial property. Thus, l'intelligentsia parisienne would denote the totality of intellectual (p.21) groups whose activities were centred in the Parisian microcosm. This tendency to conflate the two concepts should be resisted. The concept of intelligentsia emerged (pace the French political scientists previously cited) in the nineteenth century, in the specific historical and cultural context of Central and East European political development. In its paradigmatic Russian form, the Page 2 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France phenomenon was essentially the expression of a conflict between an authoritarian state and an educated intellectual élite which was radically alienated from public life. The nature of this conflict (extended and, in many ways, amplified during the Soviet period7) necessarily endowed the intelligentsia with characteristics which were intrinsic to the type of society in which it had developed. The defining contours of the Russian intelligent reflected the attitudes and values of a social stratum which was outside the sphere of the state (and, in a fundamental sense, outside the realm of the peasant-dominated civil society as well). As a political community, the Russian intelligentsia conceived intellectual activity in intrinsically moralistic and philosophical terms, and defined its central goals in relation (and often opposition) to its perception of Western social and political development.8 Furthermore, material and ideological constraints imposed by the authoritarian state (such as censorship, political repression, and denial of access to higher education and productive employment) severely affected the nature of intellectual production. In consequence, certain cultural fields such as art and literature were often transformed into allusive and symbolic forms of social criticism. As Franco Venturi said of the works of Alexander Herzen, one of the intellectual founders of Russian Populism: ‘in them was revealed the long process of spiritual enquiry, the concealed illumination of a personality in search of “truth” … All this was not incorporated in a system of philosophy but found its true outlet in literature.’9 From its immediate origins, therefore, the concept of intelligentsia (p.22) referred to a form of intellectual activity which was rooted in a particular type of society and a distinctive political culture. Its adequacy as a descriptive paradigm of the condition of intellectuals in advanced industrial societies always remained rather questionable, given that few of the basic structural features which underpinned the historical emergence of the Central and East European intelligentsias obtained in the relatively more open and developed societies of Western Europe. The enhanced political and economic discontinuities between East and West Europe in the modern era have served to confirm the inapplicability of this concept to countries such as France, where, as will be shown subsequently, the tradition of intellectual participation in public life has assumed a different character. It should not be concluded from these remarks that the concept of intelligentsia no longer retains any explanatory potential. It could, for example, be fruitfully adapted to the study of intellectual life under authoritarian and Communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century.10 It is difficult to see, however, what (other than conceptual confusion) could be gained by the adoption of the term in the modern French political context.

The Intellectual as a Socio-Professional Category In the sociological tradition, intellectual activity is generally conceived in broad terms. Thus, the American sociologist Edward Shils identified as intellectuals Page 3 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France the aggregate of persons in any society who employ in their communication and expression, and with relatively higher frequency than most other members of their society, symbols of general scope and abstract reference, concerning man, society, nature, and the cosmos. This high frequency of their use of such symbols may be a function of their own subjective propensity or of the obligations of an occupational role.11 (p.23) From this perspective, what distinguishes intellectuals from other groups in society is their ability and inclination to engage in specific types of cognitive activity. In the words of John Goldthorpe, intellectuals are ‘thinkers and writers who feel a close personal concern with questions of the human condition, and who aim to treat such questions in more than a purely scientific or scholarly manner: in particular, by “situating” them … within some wider context of meaning in order to bring out their significance beyond the immediate experience and interests of the individuals directly involved’.12

Almost equally broad in scope is the conception traditionally adopted in empirical sociological studies, where intellectual activity is perceived in socioprofessional terms. It should be noted, however, that the basic occupational groups identified in the surveys of the official Institut National des Statistiques et des Études Économiques (INSEE) no longer explicitly refer to intellectual workers as a separate category13. None the less, the general scale of intellectual activities in French society can essentially be derived from these statistics: typical groups would include artists, academics, schoolteachers, and higher and middle-ranking administrative cadres, as well as members of liberal professions. From this starting-point, different levels of activity within the general sphere of intellectual occupations may be distinguished. Raymond Aron initiated this trend in the 1950s by defining an inner and outer circle of socio-professional intellectual activities. The former consisted of those in which cultural goods were produced (in creative professions such as art, literature, and scientific research), while the latter comprised the broader areas where these values were reproduced and consumed.14 Since the renewal of French academic interest in the role of intellectuals since the 1970s, asignificant monographic literature has emerged. The (p.24) production in this field may be considered under three main headings. First, a number of works which may be described as studies in historical sociology. These are concerned with the role of intellectuals before the emergence of the concept in France in the late nineteenth century.15 Secondly, a limited number of syntheses, which purport to provide a general account of the changing nature of intellectual activity in France in the modern era.16 Finally, a wide range of sectorial studies, focusing on particular dimensions of the phenomenon: these range from surveys of academic élites to specific occupational groups in modern French society.17 The basic distinction between creative and reproductive intellectual activity is a central methodological underpinning of the approach adopted in this chapter. Although there are a number of grey areas where this opposition might be Page 4 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France difficult to establish, its underlying purpose should be relatively uncontentious: to allow for the identification of the comparatively small corpus of creative intellectuals whose activities are centred upon the production of artistic, cultural, and scientific values. In occupational terms, this entails promoting the activities of the scientific researcher over those of the technical assistant; the writer and novelist over their readers; and the academic and teacher over the student. But a rigid scheme of classification of productive intellectual activity on a purely occupational basis is not possible, nor even desirable. It is critical to preserve an element of individual indeterminacy in matters of creativity, not only because those who are occupationally involved in such endeavours may be inherently improductive (p.25) but also because such productive activity may arise in the context of secondary occupations. Ultimately, however, intellectual value is defined in the context of the space in which it is produced. In France the institutions which are recognized as the creators of cultural goods have traditionally been concentrated in a specific area. The implications of this Parisian focus will be examined in the following section. The parisian context of cultural production

In general terms, cultural life in France has always been marked by its centralized character. Some of the historical reasons for this concentration of intellectual activity in one location are easily explained. As the capital city, Paris enjoys a comparative advantage over the rest of the country in terms of the size, wealth, and literacy of its population. The demographic disparity between Paris and the provinces has been accentuated in modern times. Whereas, at the turn of the century, one in eleven of the population lived in the région parisienne, by the 1960s the proportion had risen to almost one in six.18 These favourable social and economic conditions for intellectual production were optimized by the growing physical presence of the administrative machinery of the French state in the capital. The relationship between the state and intellectual strata will be explored in greater depth later: it will be sufficient to note here that the inexorable centralization of political and administrative power in France furthered the development of productive intellectual activities. This was reflected most plainly in the emergence of institutions of higher education. Jacques Le Goff's portrait of twelfth-century Paris reveals that the modern characteristics of the French capital had profound historical roots: ‘Ainsi Paris … est pour les uns la ville-phare, la source de toute jouissance intellectuelle, pour les autres l'antre du diable où se mêlent la perversité des esprits gagnés par la dépravation philosophique et les turpitudes d'une vie adonnée au jeu, au vin, aux femmes.’19 At the centre of the intellectual dimension of these endeavours was the university system. Paris was one of the first French cities to be endowed with a university in (p.26) the Middle Ages, and from its inception this association was inextricably linked to the institutions of public authority, of Page 5 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France which the principal was the Church. Catholicism's legacy to the development of modern French intellectual culture is a subject which would require considerably more space than is available here. This heritage can be understood adequately only in the context of the inexorable centrality of the Catholic Church in French intellectual life. Until the end of the early modern era, as noted by Robin Briggs, religion ‘provided the only fully developed set of concepts through which men could rethink their relationship to one another, to society and its institutions, and to the physical world’.20 Long after the Church had lost its hegemonic place in the French intellectual microcosm, furthermore, religious ideas and values continued to structure and define the parameters of intellectual debate. This could be observed substantively in the perpetuation of the clericalist tradition, but more significantly, perhaps, in intellectual communities which were external to the Catholic fold. The quest for unity and order, the tendency to settle disputes by appealing to institutional hierarchies, the tradition of submission to higher authority, the centrality of the opposition between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and, finally, the profound sense of the universality of the values expressed in a particular socio-political doctrine—many of these characteristic features of French Catholicism could easily be detected in intellectual currents as diverse as republicanism, idealism, positivism, and Jauresian socialism21. Although Parisian (and provincial) universities continued to focus primarily on theological studies until the end of the early modern era, liberal professions such as law and medicine grew steadily in importance. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the university's functional role was already demarcated as the producer of the political and administrative élites of the ancien régime.22 The Enlightenment also generated a network of technical (p.27) écoles for the training of public servants in such fields as engineering, construction, and mining, and the role of these Parisian structures in the development of the modern French state was not insignificant. It was a testimony to the problematic and tortuous growth of state institutions in France, however, that a central administrative training school was set up only in 1945, almost a century and a half after its principle was propounded by Destutt de Tracy.23 The École Nationale d'Administration illustrated this symbiotic relationship between higher education and the grands corps of the French state in its purest form. An overwhelming proportion of ENA graduates were recruited from the Institut d'Études Politiques, the most prestigious institution of higher education in the social sciences.24 This connecting circuit between university and administrative élites was reinforced by the effects of long-term structural factors. The social composition of the ENA has become almost exclusive: the parents of the majority of recruits in each promotion come from the higher spheres of public administration, thus creating an increasingly closed social universe.25 This circularity is compounded by the character of the education received by the future administrators even before their recruitment into the grands corps. At the Page 6 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France Institut des Études Politiques, for example, many of the courses are taught by serving members of the higher civil service. The state thus featured prominently on the horizon of the French intellectual. Independently of the proportion of the French intellectual élite which entered the state machinery, the nature of the higher education system ensured that even those who remained outside its boundaries were left with an indelible imprint of the idea of the state.26 But this sense of the state was not acquired (p. 28) exclusively through élite education. The historical development and character of central institutions ensured that the French state (not always by design) occupied a fundamental position in determining the character of intellectual activity in Paris. This nexus will be explored more fully in the following section.

Intellectuals And The French State From a broad historical perspective, a significant sense in which the French state influenced the parameters of intellectual activity lies in the spatial context within which cultural production was defined. Across the different regimes which succeeded each other after the fall of the Capetian monarchy, the holders of public authority (for often conflicting reasons) sought to reinforce the main institutions of the state at the expense of peripheral centres of power. The persistent failure of these attempts to establish political stability allowed for a relatively high level of administrative continuity. Thus, the machinery of the French state developed in spite (or perhaps because) of the inherently precarious nature of the political equilibrium.27 After the Revolution this tradition of étatisme was buttressed by several key factors, which will be touched upon briefly. First, the state tradition was underpinned by political and socio-economic pressures for central intervention, produced by the requirement to achieve a balance between preserving social stability, modernizing a relatively backward economic infrastructure, and meeting strong sectorial demands for regulation. Agriculture provided the paradigmatic case of such an approach.28 Statism was also accelerated (after the 1870s) by the desire to establish a unified and cohesive sense of national identity through the educational system, generating an interpretation of French historical development which stressed the relatively higher value of centralized unity over diversity.29 Repeated experiences of war and (p.29) military occupation only emphasized the need for centralized state power and authority in critical circumstances. Finally, the ideological character of French politics, itself a reflection of irreconcilable cleavages between social groups, established a dialectic between institutional change and state growth which was put into practice at every change of regime. A polarized polity ensured that the ideological objectives of new ruling élites could often be implemented only by enhancing their control over the levers of centralized authority. These different social and political factors ultimately accounted for the Page 7 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France prevalence of an intellectual tradition of étatisme which, from the Jacobins to Charles de Gaulle, celebrated the virtues of the centralized state. This durable tradition underlay the common normative assumptions shared by modern political and economic actors in France about the character of the state. This successful imposition of Parisian political and administrative macht on the provinces could not fail to have significant ramifications on the social and material conditions of intellectual production. At a very basic level, this concentration of power and wealth determined the very definition of a cultural product. Since the market for cultural goods was primarily located in Paris, any intellectual activity which operated outside the basic channels of cultural legitimation was naturally condemned to a parochial status. This is best illustrated by the fate of one of the central vehicles of a cultural system: language. The universalization of the French language30 was achieved through the decimation of local and regional dialects, which gradually alienated peripheral conceptions of culture from the mainstream. Thus, it was by no means accidental that the triumph of French idiom in the early twentieth century coincided with the development of the concept of the intellectual. Social institutions require secure foundations: the Parisian intellectual could become a model for the rest of French intellectual society only after the conditions which allowed competing cultural conceptions to flourish had been superseded. (p.30) The prominence of hommes de lettres among the first generation of modern intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reflected the completion of an important stage in this subterranean process of cultural centralization. Paraphrasing Marx, it might be concluded that the new cultural order emerged only after the material conditions of its existence had matured in the womb of the old. The state as directive agent

This indirect influence of public authority on the determination of the normative parameters of intellectual activity was complemented by an active tradition of state involvement in the process of cultural creation. It should come as no surprise that a centralized state showed a consistent interest in intervening to supervise and regulate the direction of intellectual activity. This directive role of the state in the process of cultural creation may be regarded in both negative and positive terms. In the former sense, for example, French public authorities were always aware that academic institutions needed to be closely watched to stifle any tendencies towards political autonomy in civil society. Thus, a common recognition of the subversive implications of heterodoxy for Church and Crown alike ensured that French higher education in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remained strictly within the bounds of intellectual conformism.31 The same underlying principle of self-protection operated as a basic justification of the ancien régime institution of censorship, which, in a number of dimensions such as mass communications, survived well into the modern era.

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Intellectuals and Politics in France Equally significant, however, was the durable tradition of positive state direction of intellectual and cultural activity. It is at least arguable that many modern cultural occupations were established under the direct initiation and patronage of the princely court.32 The central place of cultural creation in the elaborate (p. 31) hierarchy of the French absolutist monarchs was clearly delineated: in this sense, the palace of Versailles was itself a potent symbol of the perceived relationship between cultural splendour and political authority. This regal conception left a deep mark on the manner in which political authority was established (and perceived) in France. After 1870 the republican tradition perpetuated and, in many ways, accentuated this symbolic link between cultural production and political identity. At a doctrinal level, a participant, undogmatic, and enlightened polity was central to the Republican conception of citizenship. To this extent, politics and culture presupposed each other: cultural activity was part of the wider pedagogical process which would nurture and consolidate the republican character of French public institutions.33 As already noted,34 this didactic conception of culture was an evident underpinning of the social philosophy of Republican élites after the 1870s. In the sphere of arts and crafts, this approach was reflected in the Republican state's promotion of the principle of ‘solidarité entre tous les arts’ as a means of consolidating the idea of national cultural unity.35 In the modern era, this approach was further reflected in the origins, character, and objectives of the Popular Front movement in the 1930s. As will be subsequently emphasized, this period marked a decisive step in the emergence of the republican dimension of French Communism. From a broader perspective, however, the Popular Front reaffirmed and amplified the centrality of culture in the political and intellectual concerns of French republicanism. The very nature of the Popular Front illustrated this tendency. The Comité du Rassemblement Populaire, the umbrella organization which regrouped the different social and political components of the Front, consisted of a total of ninety-eight organizations, which ranged from established political associations such as the PCF, SFIO, and the Radical Party to intellectual and cultural groups such as the Committee for the Fiftieth Anniversary of Victor Hugo.36 After its electoral victory in 1936, the first Popular Front government pursued a vigorous cultural (p.32) policy, the declared objective of which was to widen popular access to the existing cultural patrimony.37 It should be noted that the conception of culture promoted by the Front remained impeccably centralist. Under the strong ideological influence of the Communist Party, the Popular Front emphasized the profound unity and indivisibility of the French heritage, thus rejecting earlier sectarian distinctions between bourgeois and proletarian culture. As the editorialist Paul VaillantCouturier noted in the Communist daily L'Humanité in July 1936: ‘Nous sommes des gens solidement enracinés à la terre de France … Notre parti, par son attachement aux valeurs morales et aux valeurs culturelles … est Page 9 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France nécessairement un moment de la France éternelle.’38 The Popular Front government, thus, attempted to revive the classical republican tradition of widening access to culture and learning as a means of furthering the underlying political goals of the movement. In doing so, the Blum government continued the state tradition of directly influencing the parameters of artistic and cultural activity. Intellectual responses to state power

The relative weight (and durability) of this étatiste tradition, in turn, stimulated a negative reaction among intellectuals: this is the third way in which the French state influenced the parameters of intellectual and cultural activity. This negative intellectual attitude towards public authority may be viewed from three perspectives: its ideological representations, its occupational dimensions, and the cumulative effects of these factors. The ideological dimensions of intellectual opposition to the state differed in origin and character. Reflecting (but also aggravating) the absence of social consensus over the nature of public authority, radical theories (on both extremes of the political spectrum) consistently challenged the legitimacy of the French state since the Revolution. In the nineteenth century this basic problem underpinned the debate over the question of monarchical (p.33) restoration.39 After the consolidation of Republican power the issue remained central to the concerns of Marxists and anarchists, and also revolutionists of the Right.40 Positioned (often uncomfortably) between these extremes was a philosophical and literary tradition, the proponents of which were generally concerned with mitigating the political excesses of the state. This approach was consistently articulated by intellectuals of the French liberal tradition. Given its inherent obsession with the effective control of state power, liberalism was ideally suited to provide an ideological conduit for such concerns. In the early nineteenth century the writer Benjamin Constant invoked the dual authority of history and nature to justify the limitation of the scope of political power.41 In the modern era this dimension of French liberal discourse was reflected in an essentially moralistic approach to the sphere of politics. The political writings of Émile Chartier (Alain), Simone Weil, Albert Camus, Raymond Aron, and, more recently, Bernard-Henri Lévy illustrated (from a variety of perspectives) the central French liberal concern with the deleterious consequences of excessive state power for individual liberty. As Lévy asserted, in characteristically polemical vein, in a pamphlet published in 1987: ‘Les démocraties, elles non plus, n'échappent pas à l'arbitraire … Elles n'échappent pas toujours à l'idée, par example, d'une technique de gouvernement rétive à la controverse. Sortez votre intellectuel chaque fois qu'un imbécile vous dira que la gestion des hommes est, elle aussi, une science exacte.’42

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Intellectuals and Politics in France This intellectual opposition to the overbearing presence of the state could also be represented in occupational terms. The active role of the French state in the spheres of intellectual and cultural activity developed in the framework of a complex and often conflicting relationship with interest groups. The intricate connections between the state and pressure groups in France cannot be captured in a single formula. This is equally true of the relationship (p.34) between the state and intellectual professions during the modern era. A sectorial approach would reveal a range of different attitudes adopted by public authorities which, in turn, could trigger a variety of responses from groups within each occupational category. In some areas (such as the liberal professions), the element of confrontation could be almost entirely excluded. The state's role here may be limited to ratifying corporate arrangements. Notaries, for example, entrenched their position so successfully that no French government was able seriously to undermine the enclosed and self-regulated character of the profession.43 In the field of education the modern state settled into a variety of roles. In the domains of primary and secondary education its basic function was mediatory, attempting to placate the divergent and often irreconcilable interests of secular and religious lobbies. In the field of higher education, on the other hand, the state attempted to play a more directive role, even though its efforts were consistently frustrated by entrenched institutional interests. But the conflicting tendencies which constantly marred debates over the nature of the education system left few governments unscathed. In 1984 and 1986 the Socialist and Gaullist administrations helplessly witnessed the depths of resentment which could be triggered by relatively minor attempts to upset the status quo in the fields of secondary and higher education. In some areas the state was considerably more successful in determining the parameters of intellectual activity. But such successes often provoked an equally enduring legacy of resentment and opposition in intellectual quarters. The relationship between the French state and the mass media under the Fourth and Fifth Republics provides clear examples of hostile intellectual attitudes generated by the heavy-handed behaviour of public authorities. Since the Liberation the Republican state had maintained a keen interest in determining the contours of professional activity in both the public and private sectors of the information industry. This was achieved through ownership of the means of production (and dissemination) of information, by setting the standards governing what may be legally published, intervening (formally and informally) to influence journalistic output, and, finally, (p.35) abetting private concentrations of resources in the hands of politically sympathetic industrial groups.44 Quite naturally, this balance of forces was the source of numerous conflicts between the state and the journalistic profession. Although these tensions cannot be analysed in depth at this stage, enough has been said to identify the basic structure of the intellectual conflict between state and media: a clash between the practice of raison d'état and the deontological principles of Page 11 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France journalism. It is only against this general background that the often tempestuous relationship between the French state and a leading newspaper such as Le Monde may be understood fully.45 But the negative disposition of many French intellectuals towards the state ran deeper than the one-dimensional representations sketched above. Ideological and sectorial factors could often play a central role in determining intellectual approaches towards the state, but the ultimate source of the problem needs to be addressed from a wider perspective. The ambiguous association between intellectuals and the French state can be understood adequately only if the different factors which impinged upon the relationship are considered cumulatively. A static occupational framework could provide only a limited basis for analysing the activities of intellectuals, given that their wide-ranging interests tended to cut across formal occupational categories. This disposition has serious implications when it comes to defining the French intellectuals' attitude towards the state in general terms. Political ideologies such as Communism, Socialism, liberalism, and Gaullism provided the basic concepts through which intellectuals expressed their concerns about the problem of the state. But the source of the problem should not be reduced to its ideological expressions. Addressing the issue from the perspective of distinct occupational categories could be helpful initially, but such a specialized focus would run the risk of undervaluing the universalism inherent in traditional French intellectual activity. Only a multi-dimensional approach can resolve this dilemma. (p.36) The tendency of French intellectuals to be involved (both theoretically and in practice) in concerns which were often far removed from their areas of immediate specialization naturally resulted in varied forms of interaction with other social and institutional groups. It is from this perspective that the state loomed large on the horizon of the French intellectual. The pervasiveness of the state tradition in France ensured that most intellectual and cultural activities intersected (in varying degrees) with the interests and concerns of the public authorities. In other words, the French intellectual and the state were never far removed from each other. The extent of this proximity varied in accordance with the intensity of the state's presence in particular domains of cultural endeavour. Members of the teaching profession, for example, are state functionaries in France: in the early Third Republic the schoolteacher was regarded as a representative of the basic goals and values of the regime. This initial link between the Republican state and the teaching profession provided the basis for a tradition of political militancy among the instituteurs which has been sustained throughout the twentieth century. Thus, the proportion of school-teachers elected to the National Assembly in the 1980s ranged between a third and a quarter.46

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Intellectuals and Politics in France The relationship between intellectuals and the state was also determined by the latter's interests. For example, the activities of the journalistic and legal professions were much more directly influenced by the proclivities of the state than those of the artistic and literary communities. Yet even the latter groups could not be said to operate in a context of absolute autonomy. The writer and film producer could be materially independent of the state, but public authorities retained the power to facilitate cultural production (and, thus, to influence the parameters of creativity) through different institutional forms of sponsorship. This patronage is reflected in the fact that the French state itself was a producer of culture on a scale unparalleled in any other Western industrial nation during the modern era. This centrality of the state ultimately explains the paradox that French producers of intellectual goods regularly railed against the encroachments of the state, but, none the less, often turned (p.37) towards the public authorities to solve their professional problems. Writers petitioning to preserve the French language, film producers urging the adoption of measures to protect the local industry against foreign (i.e. American) influence, intellectuals generally yearning for a more vigorous defence of the cultural patrimony—each of these different approaches was underpinned by a common set of normative assumptions about the symbiotic relationship between the producers of culture and the public authorities. This phenomenon of group dependence on the state was by no means confined to intellectual and cultural groups: it was (and, arguably, remains) an inherent feature of the relationship between the state and civil society in a country where associational activity was traditionally relatively weak. Intellectuals, however, were most sensitive to the attentions of the state, partly because their consciousness of the intrinsic value of their autonomy was greater than that of other occupational groups in French society, and partly because their high expectations of the performance of the state were necessarily frustrated. Mutual fascination

In sum, the relationship between French intellectuals and the state may be characterized as one of mutual fascination. In a nation repeatedly scarred by social strife and profoundly shaken by institutional instability since 1789, the executive was always aware of the ideological value of intellectuals as creators and disseminators of political legitimacy. The strategies adopted by the different regimes to cope with this influential (and potentially subversive) social stratum showed significant variations. The July Monarchy successfully co-opted intellectual élites from the academic world: as noted by René Rémond, this period witnessed ‘une sorte d'osmose… entre la politique et l'Université, les ministères et les académies’.47 On the other hand, the Second Empire (especially during the 1850s) and the Vichy regime were united in their hatred of ‘intellectuals’, and deployed a battery of coercive methods to ensure political conformism among creative intellectuals (and often achieved the opposite Page 13 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France result). The Third Republic witnessed (and, in part, sponsored) the development of (p.38) an intellectual stratum which challenged the dominant positions of the cultural establishment. The Dreyfus Affair was, in this sense, a striking demonstration of the essential convergence between the rising generation of republican intellectuals and the core political values of the new order. Despite these conjunctural variations, there was a basic continuity of concern on the part of the public authorities. This disposition was reflected in the fact that the state itself took an active (and often directive) part in the process of intellectual creation, thus establishing the promotion of cultural value as one of its defining attributes. Nowhere was this interdependence of politics and culture better illustrated than in the consistent interest shown by public authorities in controlling the establishment of academic disciplines in French universities. During the Second Empire the state's awareness of the political implications of intellectual activity was prominently demonstrated by Victor Duruy's sponsorship of the discipline of political economy in the 1860s, thought to represent a means of preventing the spread of revolutionary ideas. Similar considerations underlay the establishment of sociology in the early 1890s.48 This persistent interest of the state in the cultural domain was mirrored by an enduring intellectual fascination with the central institutions of political authority. As noted so far, this interest was often expressed in negative terms, as intellectuals reacted against the interventions of the state in issues of mutual concern. It should be added, however, that the incestuous quality of the connections between intellectuals and the state was also reflected in the character of public institutions. Since the establishment of the Third Republic in 1870, this symbiotic relationship had resulted in an increasingly high level of intellectual penetration of the public political realm. In the same way as developments in many central intellectual fields were influenced by the imperative intercession of the state (education being the most obvious example), the sociological morphology of public institutions was fashioned by the emergence of modern intellectual élites. This intellectualization of the public domain in the twentieth century could be seen in many dimensions. The upper reaches of the administration, as already (p.39) noted, were colonized by graduates of the grandes écoles, a technocratic élite whose domination of the higher civil service reached its apogee under the Fifth Republic.49 This process was not limited to the administrative sector: these intellectuals' penetration of the public domain extended to the sphere of politics itself. In this respect, the signal achievement of modern French intellectuals lay (with an exception which is germane to the subject of this work) in their successful colonization of the country's principal political institution: the party. The principle of mass political organization in France was a direct outgrowth of the republican tradition. The first modern French political party, the Parti Radical et Radical Socialiste, was established in 1901 as an attempt to unite the different Page 14 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France strands of the republican movement. From its very inception, this organization was dominated by middle-class urban professionals whose rise to social prominence had coincided with the consolidation of Republican institutions in France: political philosophers, a new generation of professional activists, but also local associations, masonic groups, journalists, free-thinkers, and anticlerical education lobbies.50 Four years later, the unity Congress of the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière led to the establishment of a socialist party whose basic ethos was equally marked by the rising generation of bourgeois republican intellectuals, symbolized in the person of Jean Jaurès.51 Even the formation of the Communist Party in 1920 did not initially alter this intellectual occupation of leadership positions in mainstream Republican organizations. The first two party leaders, Louis-Oscar Frossard and Albert Treint, were both instituteurs by profession, and the comité directeur elected at the founding Congress of the party only contained four members of workingclass origin.52 Only in the late 1920s did the Communist International definitely transform the sociological character of the new party organization by instituting the ‘Bolshevization’ programme, which stipulated (p.40) that all Communist cadres should be of proletarian origin. None the less, Thibaudet's general (if somewhat polemical) depiction of the Third Republic as a ‘république des professeurs’ contained more than a grain of truth. This presentation of the successful penetration of intellectual groups into the public realm should not ignore important shifts in the distribution of power within Republican political élites since the 1880s. The Third Republic consecrated the ascendency of social strata which had hitherto been excluded from high political office. Parliamentary and ministerial office alike were dominated by the liberal professions (medicine, law, journalism) and a considerable brigade of instituteurs and professeurs de lycées. Higher civil servants and industrialists were essentially excluded from the centres of decision-making, and the configuration of the system was well reflected in the leadership of the Radical Party, which typified the socio-professional characteristics of the new middle-class political élite.53 Under the Fourth Republic, however, the centrality of these occupational groups was gradually eroded, and this decline was accelerated decisively with the advent of the Fifth Republic. The Gaullist executive, armed with a firm resolution to sweep away the traditional political élites, recruited an increasingly large proportion of higher civil servants into the political arena. With the progressive adoption of the institutional parameters of the Fifth Republic by mainstream political groups, this tendency ultimately led to the emergence of a new technocracy, in which traditional socio-professional groups were replaced by the higher civil service. By the late 1980s the preponderance of members of the grands corps in the leadership of the parties of the moderate Right and Left illustrated the inexorable centrality of the technocratic élite in modern France. It is not

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Intellectuals and Politics in France surprising, from this point of view, that polemicists were increasingly inclined to depict the political system as a ‘République des Fonctionnaires’.54 The interdependence of the political and intellectual realms

This transition from liberal professions and teachers to the haute fonction publique represented an intrinsically significant shift in (p.41) the socioprofessional character of French political élites. In the context of the present discussion, however, this shift marked a change in the distribution of power within the intellectual community, rather than a decline in the political influence of the intellectual stratum as a whole. How should such shifts in the structure of power and influence within the French intellectual community be explained? The political saliency of particular intellectual occupations may be expressed as a function of three factors: the functional requirements of the state, the changing nature and status of an intellectual discipline, and wider cultural trends in society at large. The emergence of the first generation of Dreyfusard intellectuals effectively constituted a challenge to the anti-Republican intellectual establishment in such institutions as the Académie Française and the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. With the conclusive triumph of the Republic against its enemies at the turn of the century, the middle-class intellectual groups which controlled the republican movement rapidly colonized the political system. The values of these social strata permeated the intellectual horizon throughout the Third Republic, and were typified in the abstract and scholastic pursuits of the École Normale Supérieure.55 More generally, the intellectual formation of the ruling élites of the Third Republic was dominated by disciplines such as law and classical literature, which generally reflected the elevated status of the humanities in the intellectual world.56 The rise of the haute fonction publique in the 1960s was symptomatic of wider changes in the internal and external factors which traditionally influenced the normative parameters of the French intellectual community. These changes may be summarized as a transition from universal to more specific categories of knowledge and thought. At a political level, this was a reflection of a transformation of the character of French public institutions after 1958, which, in turn, modified the functional requirements of the state. As the Gaullists launched their drive to modernize the political and economic structure of French society, the forms and categories of intellectual knowledge which had been consecrated in the public realm were modified. Technical knowledge triumphed (p.42) over the traditional humanistic culture which had formed the majority of Republican politicians of earlier generations, and this shift was reflected in the authoritative stature attained by the technical grandes écoles (especially, as already noted, the École Nationale d'Administration) at the expense of the École Normale.

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Intellectuals and Politics in France But this shift in the paradigms of intellectual activity was also partly determined by endogenous factors. The important transformations which marked the arts and social sciences in France after the 1950s cannot be described in detail at this stage, but the general trend towards specialization was unmistakable. This move from the universal to the specific resulted in a greater sense of intellectual differentiation between disciplines, thus sharpening the contrast between technical and humanistic culture. But the precise political consequences of this drift towards specialization are a matter of some dispute. It has been argued that the resulting fragmentation of knowledge, by undermining the central position occupied by the humanistic culture, eroded the ability of French intellectuals to make general statements about the world. In his discussion of the decline of left-wing intellectuals in France in the 1970s and 1980s George Ross concluded that one of the central factors which contributed to this process was the ‘fragmentation of knowledge and professionalization’ which ‘tended to structure ever smaller markets for intellectuals in ways that undercut … the universalistic intellectual posture of the traditional Left intellectual’.57 The adequacy of the concept of a market for ascertaining the sources of intellectual involvement in political life will be discussed later. But it would be mistaken to assume that intellectual universalism was the exclusive property of the French Left. The neoliberal orthodoxies of the 1980s (human rights, market principles, and functional interdependence) were as universal in scope as the Marxian principles which had dominated the French intellectual horizon in preceding decades. In other words, intellectuals continued to make generalistic statements about the political world, at a time when the heuristic foundations which allegedly made such modes of discourse possible had been swept away. Although such a matter cannot be settled here, enough has been said to demonstrate how closely the political and intellectual worlds (p.43) remained intertwined throughout the modern period. The causal connections between the two spheres cannot be delineated conclusively: it is evident that mutually reinforcing tendencies were at work. Thus, the intellectual needs of the state influenced changes in the hierarchy of academic values after the 1950s, creating a demand for a type of intellectual product which the culture normalienne was relatively less equipped to deliver. At the same time, internal lines of development within academic disciplines produced a fragmentation of existing forms of knowledge. This increasing specialization undermined the intellectual stranglehold of the humanities, and, thus, facilitated the emergence of a culture which was dominated by technical values. But these new values were not necessarily incompatible with the intellectual's traditional tendencies to universalize. Ultimately, the emergence of the current generation of énarques in French politics was symptomatic of two dominant cultural trends: a conception of politics as a technical rather than ideological activity, and an approach to intellectual endeavour which relied on explanation rather than revelation. It was Page 17 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France immensely ironical, from this point of view, that the effects of these political and intellectual transformations became most accentuated during the 1980s, under the presidency of a public figure who, both by his intellectual formation and past political inclinations, was (and, arguably, remains) a pure product of the classical republican and humanistic culture.

The Republican Intellectual Tradition This reference to the political culture of François Mitterrand provides an ideal transition to the republican tradition. It should be clear by now that intellectuals always evolved in relatively close proximity to the seat of political and administrative power in France. This proximity has been characterized in a number of dimensions: the occupation of the same physical space, the recruitment of political élites from intellectual strata, and the interventions of public authorities in the domain of intellectual and cultural production. As will be emphasized, these general parameters are equally pertinent to the analysis of the republican intellectual tradition in France. (p.44) As has been noted,58 the notion of the intellectual was established in France in the late nineteenth century and popularized during the Dreyfus Affair. One of the first to deploy the concept in its modern sense was the writer Maurice Barrès. In the early 1890s he used the term in a purely heuristic sense59 to characterize writers and artists who communicated in abstract and general ideas. During the Dreyfus Affair the concept briefly acquired pejorative connotations, being used to describe the Parisian campaigners who mooted successfully for a review of the Dreyfus trial. The triumph of the Dreyfusards contributed to the consecration of the term: by 1914 intellectual had already become a universal descriptive category. The emergence of the intellectual as a distinctive semantic category in France at the turn of the century was not accidental. If the Dreyfus Affair was a ‘victory of intellectuals’, in the words of the historian Albert Thibaudet,60 this was true not only in terms of the leading role played by the Dreyfusard campaigners, but also from a wider social and political perspective. Refining Thibaudet's conclusion, it may be argued that the Affair was the political expression of the ascendancy of a new social stratum within the French intellectual world. In a functional sense, of course, intellectual groups had operated in France long before the Dreyfus Affair. For example, prestigious scholastic and literary institutions such as the Collège de France and the Académies already existed under the ancien régime. The social and political outlook of the scholars and writers who frequented these élite institutions was essentially traditionalist, and in the late nineteenth century this was reflected in a predominantly Orleanist political configuration.61 During the Dreyfus Affair the great names of French art, science, and letters were overwhelmingly antirevisionist. Thus, Émile Zola and Charles Péguy made few converts in the circles of the Académie Française. The effective underlying strength of the Dreyfusard campaigners was based on the unflinching support of Page 18 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France (p.45) the cohorts of republican schoolteachers and their disciples. The bourgeois intellectual stratum which came of age in the Third Republic was in the process of asserting its control over the principal levers of political command: in an important sense, therefore, the Dreyfus Affair confirmed the rise of this new generation, which was already beginning to challenge the orthodoxies of the intellectual establishment.62 This ascendancy was not restricted to the relatively narrow confines of the Parisian intellectual world. The Dreyfus Affair also saw the triumph of a political system (Republicanism) over an array of conservative and reactionary forces which were spearheaded by the intellectual establishment, but which also included the Army, the Church, the nobility, and the haute bourgeoisie. The diverse strands of French republicanism shared at least one basic value: a belief in the sanctity of knowledge. Thus, from a very early stage, the political élites of the Third Republic were imbued with a positivistic ideology of science and learning which was truly religious in character.63 This essential ideological underpinning of French republicanism enhanced its political appeal to the rising generation of intellectuals. The Dreyfus Affair, from this point of view, symbolized the growing rapprochement between the ‘republican’ intellectual community and the new regime. In the long term, this convergence underlay the penetration of the French state and its political institutions by the new intellectual stratum. One of the earliest examples of overlap between scholastic and political success was provided by the itinerary of Auguste Burdeau. Despite his modest social origins, this graduate of the École Normale Supérieure rose through the ranks of the French political system to become the President of the National Assembly.64 This Republican political recruitment of the brightest minds of its time included such laureates of the concours général as Paul Bert and Albert Lebrun.65 Their itinerary was followed in subsequent (p.46) generations by the eminent boursiers Édouard Herriot and Édouard Daladier, leaders of the Radical Party. The Dreyfus Affair, accordingly, established the distinctive contours of a new type of actor in the French political system: the republican intellectual. The centrality of the Affair, and the key role played by the Dreyfusard campaigners throughout the period, ensured that politics became durably woven into the fabric of French intellectual life. The transformative character of the Affair was perfectly illustrated by its impact on the future Socialist leader Léon Blum. Although influenced by socialist and radical activists such as Lucien Herr and Georges Clémençeau, the young Blum remained a dilettante, whose primary interests lay in the world of literature and drama. The Dreyfus Affair marked the turning-point in his political evolution: the young aesthete became a republican intellectual, whose commitment to politics was based on the ideals of truth and justice.66

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Intellectuals and Politics in France These dramatic events at the turn of the century confirmed the existence of a symbiotic relationship between the republican intellectual and the sphere of politics. It was not the case that all French intellectuals became republican, or even politically active, as a result of these events. The principal legacy of this period lay in the establishment of a paradigm of action. The strength and durability of this paradigm of intellectual practice could not be measured by the extent to which it was universally observed. Its historical significance lay in the fact that it provided a fixed point of reference, recognized and (often furiously) debated by subsequent generations of intellectuals. In this sense, the Dreyfus Affair laid the foundations of a distinctive tradition of intellectual activity. This was reflected in a specific conception of political practice, the production of a particular type of polemical literature, the adoption of a number of basic goals and values, and, at heart, an ambiguous relationship with the state. The republican paradigm: problems of political definition

Thus far, the emergence of the intellectual as a political agent has been presented from a number of perspectives: the definition of a specific milieu of cultural production; the rise of a social stratum (p.47) with particular educational attributes, and its colonization of the institutions of national government; the centrality of a literary and humanist culture in the intellectual community; and, finally, the development of a distinctive political ideology which accorded a pre-eminent place to knowledge in the hierarchy of social values. It remains to be seen how this republican paradigm, which was established in the early twentieth century, continued to define the contours of intellectual intervention in public life throughout the modern era. Such an undertaking might, at first sight, appear rather hazardous. First, it might be wondered whether the concept of a ‘republican’ intellectual tradition could retain any substantive descriptive validity in the twentieth century. This question can be addressed only if it is first understood that classical French republicanism was always a relatively fluid movement, which represented (at least) three contradictory aspirations: a belief in an ideal government, a radical opposition to the very principle of centralized power, and a relentless quest for political office.67 Thus, nineteenth-century republican intellectuals were already divided between liberals, radicals, and opportunists. But, as long as the cleavage between Republicans and anti-Republicans retained its political saliency, the identification of this wider community of ‘republican’ intellectuals was a relatively simple exercise. Although separated by social, ideological, and institutional differences, their shared values brought them together after the 1880s whenever the survival of the Republic itself was at stake, as the Dreyfus Affair demonstrated most emphatically. With the consolidation of Republican institutions by the turn of the century, however, the wider movement rapidly abandoned its original sense of purpose. At a political level, republicanism gradually lost its capacity to act as a dynamic Page 20 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France force. This political decline of the classical republican movement in France was perfectly symbolized by the inexorable degeneration of the Radical Party in the later years of the Third Republic.68 With the institutionalization of the Republic, furthermore, ideological differences, previously played down in the interests of political unity, rapidly (p.48) rose to the fore. Political cleavages appeared, first between opportunists and radicals, then radicals and socialists, and later socialists and communists.69 This fragmentation of the republican tradition was abetted by growing social divisions between its components. The contradictory nature of the social and economic interests of industrial workers and the urban middle classes, for example, was underlined with greater emphasis after the creation of the French Communist Party in 1920. These differences proved to be a significant factor in the political failure of the Popular Front in the 1930s, and consistently stood in the way of subsequent attempts by Socialists and Communists to strive towards common objectives. Did the republican tradition lose all political and ideological coherence after the 1920s? Although diluted, the republican idea none the less continued to underlie the Weltanschauung of individuals and political groups. In a negative sense, the Republic continued to be defended by both liberal and radical intellectuals whenever the formal political freedoms it guaranteed appeared to be threatened by hostile forces. The origins of the Popular Front cannot be understood adequately without reference to the centrality of its goal of protecting Republican institutions from the (perceived) menace of Fascism. During the Occupation and Resistance the republican idea provided a focal point of opposition to the authoritarian Vichy regime between 1940 and 1944. Similar ‘republican’ fears were articulated in political and intellectual circles during the return to power of General de Gaulle in 1958, and continued to inspire the approach of the parties of the Left during the following two decades. It was only in the 1980s, with the election of a Socialist President, that the nature of French public institutions ceased to be a source of fundamental disagreement in the political community. Even then, the commemoration of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989 showed that the Republic did not have precisely the same symbolic and affective connotations for all political and intellectual groups. Thus, despite political and ideological differences which grew in intensity during the modern era, a negative tradition of republican solidarity continued to unite liberal and radical groups. The positive dimension of the survival of the republican idea is (p.49) difficult to identify with equal precision. The modern ramifications of the ‘spirit’ of French republicanism have rarely been analysed systematically.70 For much of the modern era republicans and Marxists shared a common faith in the laïciste virtues of science and progress. In a wider sense, the pervasiveness of republican values could be deduced from the high level of mass identification with existing institutions. An opinion poll conducted in 1988 found that two Frenchmen in three conceived of the Republic as a ‘common value’ of the entire nation.71 But how, it might be asked, could such widespread Page 21 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France sentiments provide individuals with concrete objectives for social and political mobilization? The best way of uncovering the substance of this shared heritage is to attempt to identify its moral dimension. While the negative sense of the republican idea was primarily translated into concern with political liberty (perceived to be guaranteed by the Republic), its positive dimension was essentially expressed in the principles of fraternity and solidarity. Since the Liberation this heritage may be regarded from two perspectives. In the context of domestic politics (and particularly at the level of political and administrative élites), it was demonstrated in a broad ideological consensus over social entitlements. Bitterly contested by right-wing and business groups at the time of the Popular Front,72 the principle of generalized public provision of social welfare was accepted by all major political groups after 1944. The durability of this republican conception was reflected in the fact that the principle of social solidarity was not substantively undermined during the wave of liberalization and deregulation in France in the 1980s (in stark contrast with its effects in Britain and the United States during the same period). Again, the durability of this heritage can be explained only in the context of the penetration of the traditional republican principle of social solidarity into the political sphere. Thus, it is arguable that the legacy of solidarist ideas on the political culture of the Republic was greater than has been commonly accepted.73 (p.50) In another dimension, however, this conception of fraternity was most characteristically expressed in a polemical and oppositional tradition. In keeping with the historical character of French republicanism, this tradition has accommodated both a liberal and a radical variant. The liberal conception of fraternity was highlighted by a concern with individual rights. This persistent interest was shown by distinct (and often antagonistic) intellectual and political groups at different times, but its formal underlying premiss was identical: the protection of individuals from arbitrary forms of violence and discrimination. This liberal republican principle underlay the practices of the moderate sceptics who campaigned against Stalinist Marxism during the Cold War, and also informed the wave of intellectual protests against the use of torture by the French Army during the Algerian war in the late 1950s and early 1960s; the rising wave of anti-immigrant racism in the 1980s; and, in 1990, the (re-)emergence of one of the least endearing legacies of Catholic culture in France: anti-Semitism. But, as in the nineteenth century, republican values also underlay the approach of radical groups which sought to question the structures of established order. The very moral values which brought together political and intellectual groups from different horizons in periods of national disaster (threat to the Republic itself, wars, and military occupation) were also capable of inspiring oppositional tendencies in times of relative political stability. The radical variant of the republican tradition was primarily concerned with entitlements, as opposed to Page 22 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France rights. Rather than regard social, economic, and institutional problems as unfortunate but tolerable evils in a necessarily imperfect world, the radical intellectual tradition placed itself outside the framework of the existing order. Thus, concern for social (especially redistributive) justice remained at the heart of the radical republican intellectual tradition. As will be shown subsequently, the appeal of Marxian and Communist ideas to this variant of French republicanism was considerable for much of the century. Despite these political divisions between liberal and radical intellectuals in the republican tradition, the continuity of concern with basic questions of freedom and morality was unmistakable. What bound these different (and often antagonistic) groups together was a submerged core of social and political values, which centred around the protection of democratic institutions. (p.51) Liberals and radicals disagreed, naturally, on questions of redistributive justice. But even in this field it is arguable that these arguments were conducted within a common intellectual framework (especially if these debates were stripped of their apocalyptic ideological veneer). The common values of republicans were emphasized repeatedly by intellectual groups throughout the modern period; but nowhere were they expressed with more simplicity and forcefulness than in this anonymous text, produced during the Resistance: Se demander si l'on est républicain, c'est se demander si les notions de droit et de justice ont un sens, ou bien, pour décider entre des intuitions politiques qui se contredisent et peuvent se donner également comme certaines, s'il y a d'autre méthode de choix que la violence et la guerre; ou, plus simplement encore, c'est se demander s'il y a une moralité en matière politique. Non, répondent expressément Maurras74 et ses séides. Oui, maintiennent ceux qui se disent expressément républicans.75 The republican paradigm: problems of cultural definition

A second criticism might be levelled at the attempt to identify the basic elements of continuity in the French intellectual tradition of involvement in the political realm. It might be argued that, even if the existence of a submerged core of republican values could be demonstrated, the character of intellectual professions changed beyond recognition during the twentieth century. Social, economic, technological, and endogenous factors profoundly transformed the nature of intellectual occupations in the modern era. This, in turn, would render futile any attempt to generalize about the character of cultural activity (let alone its political ramifications) over such an extensive period of time. Indeed, it would be difficult to deny the intrinsic scale of the changes in the structure and content of intellectual professions in (p.52) France since the Dreyfus Affair. Firstly, there was a remarkable numerical expansion in each of the principal intellectual occupational categories (artistic, scientific, literary, and pedagogic). It is hardly necessary to provide quantitative evidence for this Page 23 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France expansion: it is reflected in the sheer growth of institutions of higher education in France over the past century. In 1876 there were 13,000 university students in the whole of France (out of a total population of 37 million).76 A century later the estimated figure was 1.1 million (out of a total population of 56 million).77 Since the Liberation this expansion has produced a ‘cultural inflation’,78 reflected in the sharp rise in the demand for intellectual and cultural goods. Within this wider market for cultural goods, the impact of technological changes on traditional forms of intellectual production was dramatic. The mass media, particularly the television industry, played an increasingly central role in bestowing status on intellectual goods, thereby influencing the parameters of cultural activity. Furthermore, the mass media became intellectual producers in their own right, generating a form of popular culture which competed with (and threatened to submerge79) the traditional high culture of the classical period. Although the character and scale of these changes in the French intellectual community are not open to question, their effects on the political behaviour of its members require careful analysis. As previously suggested, the rise of a technocratic stream of political leaders in France during the Fifth Republic was partly a cause (as well as a reflection) of changes in the nature and scope of intellectual occupations. But the effects of greater specialization on the general political disposition of intellectual groups cannot be deduced readily. Some were inclined to argue that the emergence of an increasingly professionalized community of cultural producers over the past thirty years has totally destroyed the classical Dreyfusard paradigm of intellectual activity in France. George (p. 53) Ross, as noted previously, sought to demonstrate that the traditional figure of the intellectuel de gauche disappeared from the political scene in the 1980s. In his view, this eclipse was triggered by political and ideological factors, but was essentially a product of changes in the structure of the demand for intellectual goods. The advent of mass culture completely altered the nature of classical intellectual production, consecrating the domination of ‘large culture marketing organizations’ which ultimately determined access to the wider public.80 The underlying assumption in Ross's argument was the existence of an inherent link between the circulation of an intellectual product in society and its creator's disposition to become involved in political activity. Such a market-determined conception of the origins of intellectual intervention in the political realm rested on a basic misunderstanding of the continuities in the underlying self-justifications for such practices throughout the modern era. From the Dreyfusards to contemporary public figures in the literary, philosophical, and scientific worlds, the identity of French intellectuals was always a composite of three roles: producers of a certain type of culture, figures of distinction in their respective fields, and bearers of a particular moral and philosophical outlook. The authority of their intervention in the affairs of the temporal world rested on their belief in the general recognition bestowed upon each of these roles. The wider market for the goods produced by the Page 24 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France intellectuals, it will be noted, was only relevant to the first of these factors. In the case of the second, the competence of a cultural producer was essentially determined by peer (as opposed to mass) evaluation. The reception of a particular intellectual's moral statement about the political sphere depended, in part, on the status of the wider philosophical system from which his position was derived. But it is plain that what traditionally gave an intellectual the authority to make general statements about the political world was his status within his cultural and professional community, rather than the extent of his wider audience in society. From this perspective, modern trends towards greater specialization and professionalization in the occupational structure of the intellectual community could not have had a determinant impact on the status of particular individuals within the collectivity. In fact, the reverse was (p.54) more likely to be the case: the greater the compartmentalization of intellectual activity, the wider the scope for establishing positions of competence (and prestige) within each domain of endeavour. In sum, the undeniable changes in the structure of intellectual professions in the modern era did not significantly alter the essential parameters of intellectual intervention in politics. A key prerequisite for such political activism was a sense of concern with abstract moral principles: this determined the content of the intellectuals' intervention in the public realm. But what initially made this intervention possible were the qualifications of the intellectual in his specific field of endeavour. In 1898 Émile Zola wrote his famous open letter on the Dreyfus case, based on his belief in universal principles of justice and morality. But what gave him the authority and confidence to intervene in the political realm was his recognized competence in his particular field of creativity. The same basic pattern underlay the involvement of intellectuals in public affairs throughout the modern era. What was witnessed in the 1970s and 1980s was a decline of the radical tradition of republican intervention in the political arena, and a resurgence of the liberal variant. But the démarche of the neo-liberal intellectuals who dominated the ideological scene for much of the 1980s was characterized by the same sense of self-assurance as that of their radical predecessors. This sense of confidence arose partly from their belief that the ideological tide was turning to their advantage. But the basic belief that professional competence in any field of cultural endeavour entitled an intellectual to intervene in the public arena was not substantively different from that of earlier radical intellectual approaches. Thus, the republican intellectual tradition was predicated upon the existence of a set of core political beliefs and values, but also on a generalized belief that the possession of a certain level of professional competence in an intellectual or cultural field was in itself a sufficient qualification for making general statements about the political world.

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Intellectuals and Politics in France The universalism of republican intellectuals

The tradition of intellectual practice which dominated the political horizon for most of the modern era in France thus rested on two pillars. The first was a moralistic concern with abstract principles (p.55) of truth and justice, which was ultimately derived from classical republican philosophy. The second was a conception of the universality of reason, which (in its liberal and radical variants alike) regarded the possession of a certain level of cultural competence as a sufficient qualification for intervention in the political arena. The mutually reinforcing effects of these principles produced a tradition of intellectual universalism. On the one hand, French intellectuals were persistently drawn outside the circle of their specialized knowledge as a result of their disposition to view the political sphere through the prism of general moral principles. On the other hand, their authority for making evaluative judgements about the temporal world rested on an underlying appreciation of the interdependence of the worlds of culture and politics. The net result was a fluid conception of the socio-professional identity of the intellectual, who could play the role of a thinker, producer of culture, adviser to the prince, and political activist. This universalistic conception of intellectual activity was already evident at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, and served as ammunition for one of the basic nationalist arguments against the endeavours of the Dreyfusards. As Maurice Barrès stated emphatically: ‘J'avais une opinion dans l'affaire Dreyfus avant de connaître les faits judiciaires. Je me rangeais à l'opinion des hommes que la société a désignés pour être compétents.’81 This was an enunciation of the traditionalist conception of specialized knowledge, which was often used to invalidate the claims made by republican intellectuals throughout the modern era. In general terms, this reaction was predicated on the belief that detailed knowledge of the temporal world was a prerequisite for expressing value judgements about the political sphere. It was plain that such knowledge could be held only by those with training and experience in their specific field. Thus, the abstract universalism of the republican tradition was rejected in favour of a particularistic conception of intellectual activity. From this alternative perspective, moral and political principles were not generally true: their validity could only be established in the context of the specific circumstances of their application. Since there were no universal principles to be applied, it logically followed that the worlds of politics and culture were (p.56) autonomous rather than interdependent, and that intellectuals had no distinctive vocation to act as legislators of the universe. This point was made with characteristic lucidity by Raymond Aron throughout his career, and was emphasized in one of his first political articles, published in 1937: ‘Il n'y a pas toujours une affaire Dreyfus qui autorise à invoquer la vérité contre l'erreur.’ It was entirely fallacious to believe that intellectuals could show the rest of society where truth and justice lay: ‘Les masses qui leur font confiance ignorent que tel illustre physicien, tel écrivain

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Intellectuals and Politics in France célèbre, tel ethnologue réputé n'en savent pas plus long que l'homme de la rue …’.82 As already suggested, however, this universalist tradition did not produce a monolithic conception of the nature of intellectual involvement in political life. Although moral principles consistently underlay the concerns of republican intellectuals, the ethical systems from which these principles were derived were not necessarily compatible. Concerns about justice, for example, could be based on a Marxian framework or a liberal individualist approach. Both ideologies were universalist in scope, but the specific political conclusions reached by respective intellectual groups would often differ. Furthermore, there was no substantive agreement on the circumstances which called for the intellectual's political intervention. The Dreyfusard paradigm, from this angle, was interpreted in two ways by subsequent generations of republican intellectuals. On the one hand, it was believed that intellectuals could retain their integrity as guardians of basic moral principles only if they witheld from consistent partisan activity. On the other hand, a more militant conception emerged, which stressed that intellectuals had to be constantly present in the political world if the principles which they professed to defend were to be upheld. The idealistic and militant paradigms further reflected the cleavage between the liberal and radical variants of the republican tradition. The idealist and the militant

The classic version of the idealistic conception of the intellectual's role was expounded by Julien Benda, in a pamphlet published in (p.57) 1927. In his view, the First World War and its aftermath had introduced a significant distortion of the basic paradigm established during the Dreyfus Affair. Instead of remaining aloof from the passions of daily political existence, intellectuals were increasingly taking sides in the great ideological cleavage between nationalism and socialism: ‘Les clercs se mettent à faire le jeu des passions politiques; ceux qui formaient un frein au réalisme des peuples s'en font les stimulants … La fonction de l'intellectuel en matière politique est de prêcher le respect de la justice et de la vérité.’83 Throughout the modern era this idealistic conception of intellectual practice remained counterposed to the passions of the militant intellectuals. Until the 1980s intellectuals who adopted this approach always lived under the shadow of the alternative conception. During the inter-war period the philosopher Alain (Émile Chartier) typified Benda's vision of the relatively detached but none the less politically conscious publicist. After the Liberation this tradition was continued by the small stream of intellectuals who sought to detach themselves from the ideological battles of the Cold War. The novelist Albert Camus perfectly embodied this idealistic spirit during the late 1940s and 1950s. At the ceremony at which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1957 he declared: ‘Le rôle de l'écrivain ne se sépare pas de devoirs difficiles. Par définition, il ne peut se Page 27 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France mettre aujourd'hui au service de ceux qui font l'histoire: il est au service de ceux qui la subissent … la noblesse de notre métier s'enracinera toujours dans deux engagements difficiles à maintenir: le refus de mentir sur ce que l'on sait et la résistance à l'oppression.’84 In the 1980s, with the accentuation of the decline of radical left-wing ideology, this underlying conception became dominant among republican intellectuals. Defining the characteristics of this new type of intellectual, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy suggested: ‘[L'intellectuel] ne vit plus dans cette familiarité si précieuse, si merveilleusement rassurante! avec un idéal dont il se savait le lieutenant … Il n'adhère qu'à demi. Il ne s'associe qu'à distance. Jamais, au grand jamais, il ne s'engagera dans un combat sans avoir, au-dedans de soi, préservé cette plage de dégagement qui lui permet de réfléchir.’85 (p.58) The militant conception of intellectual engagement, against which the idealistic tradition developed in the 1920s, initially grew out of the ideological polarization of French political life in the turbulent aftermath of the First World War. The creation of the French Communist Party in 1920 provided a focal point of attraction for radical intellectuals who sought to undermine the foundations of bourgeois society. Thus, pacificists, surrealist writers, materialist philosophers, and radical Marxists converged towards the organization in the hope of furthering their political objectives.86 Although many were rapidly disillusioned by the endemic dogmatism and rampant anti-intellectualism in the party, enough remained to constitute the first generation of a new breed in the cultural community: the Stalinist intellectual. In the Popular Front era, and especially in the aftermath of the Resistance, this militant conception of intellectual practice became hegemonic on the Left. But it would be inaccurate to suggest that partisan attachment was the distinctive feature of the radical republican tradition. Its principal defining characteristic was the attachment of the intellectual to a political cause: membership of a political organization was a necessary, but by no means sufficient, condition for intellectual militancy. Thus, it was appropriate that the epitome of the new breed of intellectual was never a member of the Communist Party, even though, as for all left-wing intellectuals of his generation, the organization stood as the cardinal point of reference in his political universe until the early 1960s. Throughout his life JeanPaul Sartre typified the characteristics of the intellectuel engagé.87 His conception of the intellectual's role emphasized the universality of his concerns. Demarcating himself from the standard occupational view of intellectual activity, he argued: ‘on n'appellera pas intellectuel des savants qui travaillent sur la fission de l'atome: ce sont des savants, voilà tout. Mais si ces mêmes savants, effrayés par la puissance destructive des engins qu'ils permettent de fabriquer, se réunissent et signent un manifeste pour mettre l'opinion en garde contre l'usage de la bombe atomique, ils deviennent des intellectuels.’88 In this radical version of republican universalism, (p.59) intellectual activity was defined exclusively in the context of a specific political project: the overthrow of Page 28 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France bourgeois society. Thus, the ultimate function of the intellectual was to reveal the class tensions inherent in capitalist society, and prepare the ground for its destruction: ‘Produit de sociétés déchireées, l'intellectuel témoigne d'elles parce qu'il a intériorisé leur déchirure.’89 The militant tradition typified by Sartre clearly served as a model for emulation in French intellectual circles until the mid-1970s. There were two basic characteristics to this type of intellectual. First, unlike the idealistic Dreyfusard tradition, which was essentially concerned with defending Republican institutions and values, the militants were more inclined to reject the existing social and political order. It was in the context of this rebelliousness that Raymond Aron remarked that ‘the tendency to criticize the established order is the occupational disease of the intellectuals’.90 Although Communist intellectuals belonged to the same ideological tradition, the true spirit of intellectual militancy in the 1960s and 1970s was embodied in individuals and groups which operated outside the framework of conventional institutions. In the early 1960s these contestataires directed their support towards the struggle for national liberation in Algeria. Later in the decade the same spirit of radical protest underlay the emergence of the student movement. In the 1970s the rise of alternative social movements such as feminism, regionalism, and environmentalism further attested to the growing ideological diversity of the French Left, and the equally inexorable intellectual decline of traditional Marxian schemes inspired by the Communist Party. The second dominant characteristic of the militant tradition was expressed in the method and style used to convey the intellectuals' political ideas. During the Dreyfus Affair the use of the manifesto introduced a new mode of political expression: the public petition. This form of political discourse was by no means the exclusive preserve of the Dreyfusards. During the Affair, and throughout the modern era, nationalist and conservative intellectuals also intervened in the political arena by appending their names to general or specific political declarations, which would then be published in the (essentially Parisian) press. But the frequency with (p.60) which this method was used ultimately depended upon the intellectual's conception of his role as a political actor. For those who believed that the intellectual should intervene in politics only in relatively serious circumstances, the manifesto was an instrument for occasional use. For the intellectuel engagé, however, politics was the essence of life. Thus, the petition became a privileged mechanism for expressing the passions of the militants. It is entirely appropriate, from this point of view, that an exercise to determine the identity of the intellectual who signed the greatest number of these public declarations in Le Monde between 1946 and 1969 should have concluded that one name preceded all others (by a considerable margin): JeanPaul Sartre.91

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Intellectuals and Politics in France At the end of this general survey of the place of intellectuals in French politics and society it may be affirmed that the parameters of individual intervention in public affairs during the modern era were determined constantly by trends in three key areas. The first determinant was purely contextual, but its intrinsic significance should not be undervalued. The Parisian microcosm constituted the milieu within which intellectual and cultural creation flourished, and this spatial concentration undoubtedly influenced the morphology of the intellectual community. Physical proximity facilitated substantial interaction between different intellectual groups and occupations. This concentration was amplified by the presence of the principal institutions of public authority, and the increasing weight of the state tradition during the twentieth century. More precisely, the character of the French state reinforced the tendency for cultural activity to be centred within a remarkably small network of institutions, which partly contributed to the strikingly incestuous nature of the Parisian intellectual community. The rise of the modern democratic Leviathan also had a direct impact on the social and political conditions of intellectual production. Always conscious of the legitimating (and potentially subversive) role of intellectuals in a society deeply scarred by social divisions and institutional discontinuities, the French state often sought to influence the parameters of cultural activity to serve its particular political and ideological concerns. This per (p.61) vasive character of the presence of the state in the French cultural universe had profound consequences on the intellectuals' perception of the nature of public authority. On the one hand, the very nature of the Republican state facilitated the penetration and colonization of public institutions by intellectual strata. From this perspective, the modern political and administrative system increasingly appeared as the preserve of an exclusive professional élite. But the Jacobin state's attempts to intervene in the process of intellectual and cultural creation also generated strong feelings of hostility. These structural factors ultimately explained why many French intellectuals' relationship with the state consistently assumed a fraught and almost schizophrenic character. This inherently intricate relationship was complicated further by the ideological context of French politics. It is not easy to generalize about the interaction between dominant trends in the political and intellectual worlds in the twentieth century. It may be suggested, however, that one of the distinctive features of the modern French political tradition was the capacity of intellectual currents to reflect, but also to fashion, concrete social practices. In this way, the emergence of the Dreyfusard intellectual could not be divorced from the establishment and consolidation of the Republican system; the rise of the intellectuel engagé could not be separated from the turbulent context of the Republican struggle against authoritarianism during the 1930s and 1940s; and the structuralists' desperate quest for transcendental significance was undoubtedly the initial cultural

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Intellectuals and Politics in France expression of the ideological black hole which first threatened the political system after the mid-1970s, then engulfed it almost totally in the 1980s. One of the major casualties of this latter phase of intellectual adjustment was the French Communist Party. How this organization came to occupy a central position in the Parisian intellectual horizon, and why this privileged place was eventually lost, are the two principal questions which this book will set out to answer. Notes:

(1) Aleksander Gella, ‘The Life and Death of the Polish Intelligentsia’, Slavic Review, 30/1 (1971). (2) Isaiah Berlin, ‘The Birth of the Russian Intelligentsia’, in Russian Thinkers (New York: Penguin, 1978), 116. (3) Pascal Ory and Jean-François Sirinelli, Les Intellectuels en France, de l'affaire Dreyfus à nos jours (Paris: Armand Colin, 1986), 11. (4) Berlin, ‘Birth of the Russian Intelligentsia’, 117. (5) L. A. Gordon and A. K. Nazimova, ‘The Socio-Occupational Structure of Contemporary Soviet Society’, in M. Yanowitch (ed.), The Social Structure of the USSR (New York: Sharpe, 1986), 10. (6) See e.g. Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman, Les Intellocrates: Expédition en haute intelligentsia (Paris: Ramsay, 1981); and Régis Debray, Le Pouvoir intellectuel en France (Paris: Ramsay, 1979). (7) See Moshe Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon: A Historical Interpretation (California: Radius, 1988), 57–62; Geoffrey Hosking, The Awakening of the Soviet Union (London: Heinemann, 1990), 37–49; and Boris Kagarlitsky, The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present (London: Verso, 1988), 88–9. (8) See Richard Pipes, ‘The Historical Evolution of the Russian Intelligentsia’, in Richard Pipes (ed.), The Russian Intelligentsia (New York: Columbia, 1961), 47. (9) Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution (London: Weidenfeld, 1960), 23. (10) In this respect, the origins of the (often decisive) role played by intellectuals in the social and political upheavals of 1989–90 in Central and Eastern Europe would constitute an inviting subject of further research. (11) Edward Shils, ‘Intellectuals’, in David Sills (ed.), International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 399.

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Intellectuals and Politics in France (12) John H. Goldthorpe, ‘Intellectuals and the Working Class in Modern Britain’, in David Rose (ed.), Social Stratification and Economic Change (London: Hutchinson, 1988), 39. (13) The INSEE's occupational schema consists of 9 groups (further subdivided into categories): farmers, agricultural workers, industrial managers, members of liberal professions, intermediate administrative cadres, office clerks, industrial workers, service personnel, and other (artists, clergy, army/police). See Maurice Parodi, L'Évolution de la société française depuis 1945 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1981), 245. (14) Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (London: Secker and Warburg, 1957), 206–8. (15) Notably Jacques Le Goff, Les Intellectuels au Moyen Âge (Paris: Seuil, 1985); Robert Mandrou, Des humanistes aux hommes de science (Paris: Seuil, 1973); and Daniel Roche, Les Républicains des lettres (Paris: Fayard, 1988). The key study of the emergence of intellectuals in France in the late 19th century is Christophe Charle, Naissance des ‘intellectuels’ 1880–1900 (Paris: Minuit, 1990). (16) The first important work in this field was Louis Bodin's Les Intellectuels (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964). Recent works include Pascal Ory's L'Entre-Deux-Mai: Histoire culturelle de la France, mai 1968–mai 1981 (Paris: Seuil, 1983); Ory and Sirinelli, Les Intellectuels en France; and JeanFrançois Sirinelli, Intellectuels et passions françaises: Manifestes et pétitions au xxème siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1990). (17) On the academic world, see Jean-François Sirinelli's detailed historical study of an inter-war generation of graduates of the École Normale Supérieure, Génération intellectuelle: Khâgneux et normaliens dans l'entre-deux-guerres (Paris: Fayard, 1988); for coverage of more recent times, see Pierre Bourdieu's studies of French universities, Homo Academicus (Paris: Minuit, 1984) and the grandes écoles, La Noblesse d'État (Paris: Minuit, 1990). (18) See Maurice Larkin, France since the Popular Front (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 201–2. (19) Le Goff, Les Intellectuels au Moyen Âge, 25. (20) Robin Briggs, Communities of Belief: Cultural and Social Tensions in Early Modern France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 381. (21) Claude Nicolet, L'Idée républicaine en France (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), 498– 9. It has often been argued that Marxism and Christianity demonstrate the validity of the principle of the identity of opposites. For a variant of this religious analogy, which regarded Communism as a secular version of Islam, see Jules

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Intellectuals and Politics in France Monnerot, Sociologie du communisme:èchec d'une tentative religieuse au xxème siècle (Paris: Hallier, 1979). (22) See Laurence Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 14–15. (23) See Pierre Rosanvallon, L'État en France, de 1789 à nos jours (Paris: Seuil, 1990), 65; also Nicolet, L'Idée républicaine, 120–2. On the short-lived experience of the École d'Administration during the Second Republic, see Vincent Wright, Le Conseil d'État sous le Second Empire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1972), 173–4. (24) Even before the creation of the ENA, the IEP (known as the École Libre des Sciences Politiques between 1872 and 1945) provided most of the recruits for the grands corps. For the period 1901–35, for example, see table 1 in Ezra N. Suleiman, Les Hauts Fonctionnaires et la politique (Paris: Seuil, 1976), 23. (25) See Bourdieu, La Noblesse d'État, 191. (26) This is underlined in the portrait of the typical young maître de conférénces at the Institut des Études Politiques, depicted by the Sciences-Po historian Raoul Girardet: ‘Il appartient à un grand corps, et il le fait savoir. Il parle de tout avec aisance, satisfaction, et autorité … La très haute idée qu'il se fait et qu'il professe de l'État et du service de l'État se confond enfin avec la très haute idée qu'il se fait de lui-même.’ See Raoul Girardet and Pierre Assouline, Singulièrement libre: Entretiens (Paris: Perrin, 1990), 102. (27) See Rosanvallon, L'État en France, 275–6. (28) See Bruno Jobert and Pierre Muller, L'État en action: Politiques publiques et corporatismes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1987), 79–100. (29) As Léon Gambetta declared in a speech in Sept. 1881: ‘quand les individualitiés sont impuissantes, quand cette collection, cette réunion, cette association de volontés libres et d'efforts individuels avortent, il reste une grande et haute personne sociale, le pays, l'État, qui se doit à lui-même d'intervenir, non pas pour opprimer, mais pour imprimer le mouvement,… et amener chaque citoyen à l'épanouissement complet de son intelligence et de sa raison.’ Quoted in Nicolet, L'Idée républicaine, 454–5; emphasis added. (30) See Henri Mendras, La Seconde Révolution française 1965–1984 (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 147. (31) See Brockliss, French Higher Education, 444–5. The prominent role of lawyers in the French Revolution suggested that these measures bore rather meagre results.

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Intellectuals and Politics in France (32) The emergence of the arts as an autonomous remunerated occupation, for example, may be traced to its central status in the medieval and early modern princely court. See Martin Warnke, L'Artiste et la Cour: Aux origines de l'artiste moderne (Paris: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1990). (33) Nicolet, L'ldée républicaine, 496–7. (34) See n. 29 above. (35) See Deborah L. Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 174. (36) See Julian Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy 1934–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 114–15. (37) See Pascal Ory, ‘La Politique culturelle du premier gouvernement Blum’, Nouvelle revue socialiste, 10–11 (1975). (38) In an article entitled, appropriately enough, ‘Des capétiens aux communistes’, in L'Humanité, 11 July 1936; quoted in Nicole Racine and Louis Bodin, Le Parti Communiste Français pendant l'entre-deux-guerres (Paris: Armand Colin, 1972), 209. (39) See René Rémond, La Droite en France, de la Première Restauration à la vème République (Paris: Montaigne, 1968), esp. 25–74. (40) On the latter, see Zeev Sternhell, La Droite révolutionnaire 1885–1914 (Paris: Seuil, 1978); and Ni gauche ni droite (Paris: Seuil, 1983). For a general synthesis, see Pierre Milza, Fascisme français: Passé et présent (Paris: Flammarion, 1987). (41) See Pierre Manent, Histoire intellectuelle du libéralisme (Paris: CalmannLévy, 1987), 184. (42) Bernard-Henri Lévy, Éloge des intellectuels (Paris: Grasset, 1987), 97. (43) See Ezra Suleiman's study, Private Power and Centralization in France: The Notaires and the State (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987). (44) For a broad historical survey of the development of the press in France, see Claude Bellanger et al., Histoire générale de la presse française, 5 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1969–1976). (45) For an exploration of this problem from the perspective of the first editor of Le Monde, see Laurent Greilsamer's biography of Hubert Beuve-Méry (Paris: Fayard, 1990).

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Intellectuals and Politics in France (46) See Jean-Luc Bordiguel, Rapport au IIème colloque de l'Association Internationale de la Fonction Publique (Bruxelles: Institut National des Sciences Administratives, 1988), 159–60. (47) Rémond, La Droite en France, 88. (48) See George Weisz, ‘The Republican Ideology and the Social Sciences: The Durkheimians and the History of Social Economy at the Sorbonne’, in Philippe Besnard (ed.), The Sociological Domain: The Durkheimians and the Founding of French Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 94 and 115. (49) See Yves Mény, ‘Formation et transformation des policy communities: L'Example français’, in Yves Mény (ed.), Idéologies, partis politiques, et groupes sociaux (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989), 358–9. (50) See Serge Berstein, Histoire du Parti Radical, i. La Recherche de l'Âge d'or 1919–1926 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1980), 40–3. (51) See Georges Lefranc, Jaurès et le socialisme des intellectuels (Paris: Montaigne, 1968). (52) Out of a total of 32 (24 titular and 8 candidate members). See David Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals (London: André Deutsch, 1964), 23. (53) See Pierre Birnbaum, Les Sommets de l'État (Paris: Seuil, 1977), 30–47. (54) The title of a pamphlet (Paris: Albin Michel, 1988) by Thierry Pfister, a political journalist and former member of Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy's cabinet. (55) See Sirinelli, Génération intellectuelle, 139. (56) See Jean Estèbe, Les Ministres de la République (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1982), 104–5. (57) George Ross, ‘The Decline of the Left Intellectual in Modern France’, in Alain Gagnon (ed.), Intellectuals in Liberal Democracies: Political Influence and Social Involvement (New York: Praeger, 1987), 54. (58) See Michel Winock, ‘Les Intellectuels dans le siècle’, Vingtième siècle: Revue d'histoire, 2 (Apr. 1984). (59) In his Le Culte du moi: Examens de trois idéologies (1892); see Zeev Sternhell, Maurice Barrès et le nationalisme français (Paris: Armand Colin, 1972), 274.

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Intellectuals and Politics in France (60) Quoted in Sternhell, Maurice Barrès, 273. (61) For an account of the origins of the Orleanist hegemony in these institutions, see Rémond, La Droite en France, 88. (62) As concluded by Christophe Charle: ‘Derrière la lutte entre les "intellectuels" dreyfusards et antidreyfusards … se développe une opposition générale entre les "intellectuels" au sens politique et "l'élite" au sens social. Chaque parti reproche à l'adversaire de se poser en une nouvelle aristocratie ou de ranimer l'esprit de caste. C'est donc d'une lutte sur la définition légitime des dominants et du mode de domination sociale qu'il s'agit’; in Naissance des ‘intellectuels’, 223. (63) Nicolet, L'Idée républicaine, 488. (64) See Estèbe, Les Ministres de la République, 42. (65) Ibid. 102. (66) See Gilbert Ziebura, Léon Blum et le Parti Socialiste 1872–1934 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967), 35–6. (67) See Theodore Zeldin, France 1845–1945: Ambition, Love, and Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 494–5. (68) See Berstein, Histoire du Parti Radical, ii. Crise du radicalisme 1926–1939 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1982). (69) See Eugene Weber, ‘Un Demi-Siècle de glissement à droite’, International Review of Social History, 5 (1960), 165–201. (70) For one of the few exceptions, see Jean Petot, ‘La Tradition républicaine en France’, in Jahrbuch des Öffentlicben Rechts der Gegenwart, 38 (Tübingen, 1989). (71) Quoted in Mendras, La Seconde Révolution française, 131. (72) See Jean-Pierre Azéma and Michel Winock, ‘Naissance et mort’: La Troisième République 1870–1940 (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1976), 236–7. (73) As noted by Jack Hayward, in ‘The Official Social Philosophy of the French Third Republic: Léon Bourgeois and Solidarism’, International Review of Social History, 6 (1961), 48. (74) Charles Maurras (1868–1952), authoritarian right-wing French nationalist writer, who led the anti-Republican Action Française movement during the interwar period. Despite his profound Germanophobia, he supported the pro-

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Intellectuals and Politics in France Nazi Vichy regime after 1940, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1945 for collaboration. (75) Quoted from De la Résistance à la Révolution: Anthologie de la presse clandestine française (Neuchâtel: Baconnière, 1945), in Michel Winock, ‘Les Affaires Dreyfus’, in Nationalisme, fascisme, et anti-sémitisme en France (Paris: Seuil, 1990), 174; emphasis added. (76) See George Weisz, The Emergence of Modern Universities in France, 1863– 1914 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983), 22. (77) See table 10 in Jean-Daniel Reynaud and Yves Grafmeyer (eds.), Français, quiêtes-vous? (Paris: La Documentation Française, 1981), 488. (78) The expression is used by François Bourricaud, in Le Bricolage idéologique: Essai sur les intellectuels et les passions démocratiques (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980), 192. (79) See the trenchant essay on this theme by Alain Finkielkraut, La Défaite de la pensée (Paris: Gallimard, 1987). (80) Ross, ‘The Decline of the Left Intellectual’, 56. (81) In Scènes et doctrines du nationalisme, quoted in Sternhell, Maurice Barrès, 277; emphasis added. (82) In Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 44 (1937); quoted in Sirinelli, Génération intellectuelle, 593–4. (83) Julien Benda, La Trahison des clercs (Paris: Grasset, 1927). (84) Albert Camus, ‘Discours du 10 décembre 1957’, in Albert Camus, Essais, ed. R. Quilliot and L. Faucon (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), 1072. (85) Lévy, Éloge des intellectuels, 128; emphasis added. (86) See Racine and Bodin, Le Parti Communiste Français, 99–102. (87) For biographical details, see ANNIE COHEN-SOLAL, Sartre 1905–1980 (Paris: Gallimard, 1985). (88) Jean-Paul Sartre, Plaidoyer pour les intellectuels (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), 13; emphasis added. (89) Ibid. 41. (90) Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, 210. (91) See Sirinelli, Intellectuels et passions françaises, 9–10. Page 37 of 38

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Intellectuals and Politics in France

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation Sudhir Hazareesingh

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the condition and situation of the French Communist intellectuals in the wider tradition of political activity in France. Though the French Communist Party (PCF) occupied the same terrain as the republican tradition, it was also deep-rooted in Leninist and syndicalist origins, which ensured that the initial political culture of French Communism differed in a number of ways to the core principles and values of republicanism. Thus, the position of intellectuals in the party differed considerably from the republican paradigm. Bourgeois were welcome in the party but they were kept away from the levers of power in the organization, and the party's leadership remained in the hands of working class political activists. Keywords:   French Communist Party, French intellectuals, republicanism, working class, political activists, communism, France

THE previous chapter outlined the determinants of republican intellectual practice from a number of perspectives. The first condition of intellectual activity was spatial: Paris defined the milieu within which high cultural values were produced. The proximity of the central institutions of the state, and the concentration of the principal means of expression and communication in the French capital, further underlined the exclusive cultural character of the Parisian microcosm. The presence of the state, furthermore, encouraged the politicization of intellectual groups. On the one hand, intellectual élites were increasingly drawn into public office, penetrating the main political and administrative institutions of the Republic. On the other hand, the state's Page 1 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation enduring efforts to intervene in the cultural sphere often generated negative reactions from intellectual quarters. This ambiguous relationship between intellectuals and the state was perfectly encapsulated in the radical republican attitude towards the Republic itself. When the formal liberties guaranteed by the state appeared to be threatened, these intellectuals rarely hesitated to rally under the Republican banner. In times of relative political quiescence, however, their attitude towards public authority was often implacably confrontational. Underlying the belief that their political activity was both legitimate and necessary was the sense (common to liberal and radical intellectuals alike) that there existed a close relationship between cultural competence and the capacity to exercise political judgement. The classical republican tradition strongly emphasized the centrality of learning as a pre-condition for the enjoyment of political freedom: knowledge was considered the first of civic virtues, and this conception naturally granted intellectuals a privileged position in the social and political hierarchy. Thus, the (p.63) prestige of the political realm was linked to the cultural competence of its practitioners, just as the eminence of an intellectual was partly gauged by his capacity to step outside the bounds of his scholastic preoccupations. The object of this chapter will be to situate French Communist intellectuals in the wider tradition of political activity outlined in the preceding chapter. In a number of respects, the PCF occupied the same terrain as the republican tradition. The party's principal political and cultural institutions were located in Paris, thus mirroring the spatial dimension of high cultural production. Furthermore, the party actively participated in (and often spearheaded) unitary political efforts to defend the integrity of Republican institutions against internal and external encroachments. But this republican dimension of the PCF's collective identity was never exclusive. The Leninist and syndicalist origins of the party ensured that the initial political culture of French Communism departed in a number of ways from the central values and principles of republicanism. The survival of these original traits, even after the PCF was transformed into a mainstream political organization in the wake of the Popular Front, meant that the place of intellectuals in the party differed considerably from the classical republican paradigm. Bourgeois intellectuals, although welcomed in the party, were kept away from the levers of power in the organization. Thus, unlike other parties of the Left (Socialist and Radical), and, in the long term, unlike all major political organizations, the leadership of the French Communist Party remained firmly in the hands of working-class political activists. The radical political objectives of the PCF, furthermore, sharpened the conflictory relationship between Communist intellectuals and the French state. This resulted in the paradoxical situation which reflected the ambivalence of the party's political identity. On the one hand, Communist intellectuals were driven by the ambition of radical social Page 2 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation and political change, which required the subversion of the existing order. On the other hand, the achievement of this goal was often postponed in the interest of preserving the Republican character of the state. The dominant perception of the value of culture in the party also reflected the inherent tensions in the PCF's intellectual identity. As already noted, the Popular Front marked the formal conversion of the PCF to the political and cultural values of classical French (p.64) republicanism. To this extent, the party's conception of high culture was essentially indistinguishable from that of other mainstream parties of the Left and Centre. But the accompanying conception of cultural excellence as an enabling condition of public activity was never grounded in the party's political culture. On the contrary, the PCF's Stalinist conception of the determinants of political knowledge tended to equate wisdom with the (imputed) beliefs and values of the working class, thus implicitly rejecting the traditional republican claim of the political superiority of the bearers of the classical high culture. The political and institutional contours of Communist intellectuals will be described in greater detail in Chapter 3, thus bringing out the dimensions of both continuity and also rupture with the republican tradition. But this depiction cannot be undertaken without addressing a question which it presupposes. Given the basic opposition between the political assumptions of the classical conception of culture and the PCF's emphasis on the preeminence of workingclass social and political values, how is the very presence of intellectuals in the party to be accounted for? Why did several generations of productive intellectuals, many of whom were figures of great eminence in their particular disciplines, choose to join an organization which (even while it proclaimed its appreciation of the cultural values embodied in intellectuals) specifically denied them positions of power and authority? What underlying features of the social and political identity of broader intellectual occupations are revealed by attempts to establish the roots of their affiliation to the Communist Party?

The Place of Intellectuals in the Marxist Tradition Before these central issues are addressed from the French Communist perspective, some of their antecedents should be examined in the wider historical context of the Marxist tradition. The question of the social identity and political role of intellectuals was an inherent feature of the Marxian problematic. As noted by Jacqueline Mer, ‘au second degré, le marxisme est une illustration du principe de la collaboration du cerveau et de la main: il ne (p.65) s'agit pas d'une histoire de pauvre racontée par un moraliste … mais celle d'un ouvrier racontée par un intellectuel’.1 Throughout the history of Marxism two basic questions remained at the centre of this narrative. The first was essentially classificatory: where did intellectuals belong in the social structure? The second interrogation followed directly from the first: what political roles did

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation intellectuals perform in society, and what place should be assigned to them in the revolutionary organization? Although Marx and Engels did not elaborate a systematic conception of the place of intellectuals in the social structure, the general thrust of their writings on the subject can be reconstructed synthetically. Class formation was generally considered from two vantage-points, economic and psychological. In an objective sense, class identity was established by virtue of an individual's position within social relations of production: hence the derivation of the two central Marxian social categories, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. But this material attribute was not a sufficient condition of the existence of a social class: its members also needed to share a common consciousness of their social existence as a collectivity. This subjective dimension of social identity underpinned the possibility of political action. As Marx and Engels wrote in The German Ideology: ‘the separate individuals form a class only in so far as they have to carry on a common battle against another class’.2 In neither of these two dimensions did Marx and Engels consider that intellectual groups formed a class. Intellectuals in capitalist societies did not control the material means of production, and they also lacked the sense of cohesiveness which constituted the distinctive characteristic of the class für sich. Far from recognizing the specific social identity of intellectuals, the Communist Manifesto claimed that the growing social and political polarization between the two dominant classes had effectively reduced the condition and status of intellectual occupations to the level of the working class. ‘The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the (p.66) poet, the man of science, into paid wage labourers.’3 Despite differing in social origins and educational achievements from the urban proletariat, intellectual occupations suffered from similar forms of exploitation. To this extent, the political interests of intellectuals and workers were essentially compatible. Intellectuals could, thus, contribute their theoretical skills to the revolutionary cause. In his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law Marx summarized this potential symbiosis between worker and intellectual in the following terms: ‘As philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapons in philosophy.’4 Yet, despite his own prominent role as a political activist, Marx firmly insisted that the liberation of the proletariat from the bonds of capitalist exploitation would be achieved by workers themselves. ‘Who alone will accomplish the coming French revolution?’, asked Marx rhetorically, in a letter to the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung in January 1848. The answer was as short as it was categorical: ‘the proletariat’.5 This tension between the intellectuals' objective interests and the principle of self-emancipation of workers underlay the question of political leadership throughout the history of Marxian socialism. For the sake of brevity, and at the Page 4 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation risk of crude over-simplification, it may be suggested that the debate over the place of intellectuals in the workers' movement produced two radically divergent approaches. The classical tradition regarded intellectuals as the ideologists of the workers' movement, naturally destined to play a central political role in the light of the relative lack of education and political consciousness of the working class. This conception of the centrality of intellectuals was exemplified by Marx and Engels themselves, in their practical political activity in the ill-fated First International.6 This conception became the orthodoxy in the formulations of Kautsky and the Marxists of the Second International, and was articulated further in the theoretical writings of Lenin. As is well known, the Bolshevik leader emphasized that workers were incapable of achieving political consciousness spontaneously. The labour movement needed to be (p.67) guided by ‘the most advanced theory’,7 and it was plain that this articulation could be provided only by intellectuals. In the context of political action, furthermore, Lenin stressed that social origins were largely irrelevant: ‘the organization of revolutionaries must consist, first, foremost, and mainly of people who make revolutionary activity their profession … In view of this common feature of the members of such an organization, all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals, and certainly distinctions of trade and profession, must be utterly obliterated.’8 After 1917, despite his occasional diatribes against the ‘drooping intellectuals’ who had served the Tsarist regime, Lenin never really wavered in his belief in the essential administrative value (and general cultural superiority) of intellectual groups.9 This Marxian conception of intellectuals as the linchpin of the workers' movement was given its most elaborate exposition in the writings of Antonio Gramsci. He retained Marx's essentially dichotomic conception of the social structure, but suggested that each of the two principal classes produced its own ideologues: the organic intellectuals. Gramsci's conception of ‘hegemony’ stressed that the political domination of ruling social groups was not exercised by material force alone, but also (and perhaps especially) through their control of heuristic institutions: schools, churches, and the mass media. Intellectuals were, thus, particularly vulnerable to the material and ideological constraints imposed by the ruling order: ‘one of the most important characteristics of every class which develops towards power is its struggle to assimilate and conquer “ideologically” the traditional intellectuals. Assimilations and conquests are the more rapid and effective the more the given social class puts forward simultaneously its own organic intellectuals.’10 Thus, the political victory of the working class and its allies required the creation of conditions for a new hegemony: intellectuals were naturally destined to play a central role in the establishment of this new intellectual and moral order. (p.68) In sum, this classical Marxist conception of the place of intellectuals in society stressed a number of social and political convergences between intellectuals and the working class. The socio-economic condition of intellectuals Page 5 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation in capitalist society shared many common features with that of manual workers. Furthermore, intellectuals could use their specialized skills to further the development of the revolutionary cause: their presence in the labour movement was, from this point of view, not simply tolerable but positively necessary. It is arguable that, implicit in this classical Marxian approach, was the view that the traditional high culture of the aristocratic and bourgeois worlds was intrinsically valuable, superior to any form of culture which the working class could produce. In this sense, the merit of the revolution would not lie in creating radically new artistic and cultural forms, but in making the existing range of cultural goods available to all social classes.11 But a much more immediate implication of this underlying view was that intellectuals (the bearers of traditional cultural values) had a pre-eminent role to play in the leadership and organization of the labour movement. Thus, it is hardly surprising, in the light of the durability of its classical Marxist and Gramscian heritage, that the leadership of the Italian Communist Party (after its post-Resistance reconstruction) was largely dominated by middle-class intellectuals.12 The marxian anti-intellectual tradition

This conception of the role of intellectuals was by no means undisputed in the Marxian revolutionary tradition. Divergences were already evident in the assessment of the place of intellectuals in the social structure. In opposition to the Marxian claim that intellectuals were increasingly subjected to the same forms of economic and political exploitation as proletarians, many revolutionaries stressed the world of difference which separated the man of culture from the manual worker: contrasts in social origins and occupational status, but also in material conditions and ways of life. Georges Sorel, the epitome of anti-intellectualism in the (p.69) French labour movement, rejected the notion of intellectual pauperization as a sinister machination to wrest control of the workers' movement from the hands of the proletariat: ‘Ces Intellectuels, mal payés, mécontents ou peu occupés, ont eu I'idée vraiment géniale d'imposer I'emploi du terme impropre de prolétariat intellectuel: ils peuvent ainsi facilement se faufiler dans les rangs du prolétariat industriel.’13 The political implications of this conception of the economic and social uniqueness of the working class were significant. The exceptional nature of the proletarian condition implied that knowledge of the type of action needed to overcome its alienation could only come from within the ranks of the working class. Thus, the labour movement needed to produce political leaders whose social origins were exclusively proletarian. This view was articulated in France by Pierre Joseph Proudhon, in his work De la capacité politique des classes ouvrières,14 published (posthumously) in 1865. The logical corollary of this conception was strengthened considerably during the second half of the nineteenth century, in the wake of the political failures of the radical socialist movement. Bourgeois intellectuals were considered a positive menace to the proletariat, as it was believed that they sought to impose their conceptions and Page 6 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation values on the workers' movement. This sentiment was articulated strongly after the failure of the Paris Commune, and was given its most powerful exposition in the tradition of revolutionary syndicalism.15 In the words of Georges Yvetot, one of its prominent militants: la classe ouvrière est assez grande pour marcher toute seule puisqu'elle sait mieux que les intellectuels où elle va, vers quels buts et par quels moyens … Elle a raison, la classe ouvrière, de se défier des gens qui, n'ayant pas subi la même misère, n'ayant point reçu la même éducation, n'ayant point ambitionné le même avenir, ne visant point la même vie, prétendent lui apprendre ce qu'elle est, ce qu'elle doit être.16 (p.70) Ultimately, and despite claiming to descend from Marx, this conception directly contradicted the classical Marxist assumption of the universality of bourgeois culture. Thus, the substantive continuities between capitalism and socialism, which were inherent in the Marxian vision of the latter growing out of the former, were effectively denied. The syndicalist repudiation of intellectuals represented a complete rejection of the social and cultural universe from which their political values were derived. From this angle, the radical character of the rupture between the old world and the new was accentuated. The creation of a new society required a complete departure from the wider cultural conceptions which had prevailed up to that point. The syndicalist Émile Pouget made this abundantly clear in his description of the bearers of the classical culture as ‘parasites’, who would be eliminated after the establishment of the new order.17 It is unlikely that this self-contained conception of the political and cultural development of the working class (and the rampant anti-intellectualism which was its natural corollary) would have continued to enjoy much resonance in the modern French Marxist tradition after 1919. The strength of the anarchocommunist and syndicalist movements in France had rested on the relative absence of large-scale industrial concentrations, and the timorous social policy of the bourgeois Republican élites. These radical groups were further nourished by the general instability of the political system in the early days of the Third Republic, which fuelled the cleavage between the reformist and revolutionary wings of the French labour movement.18 By the end of the First World War, however, the autonomist tendencies which had been sustained by these underlying socio-economic tensions appeared to be on the wane. Furthermore, both the principle of proletarian internationalism and the practice of the general strike, the central myths in the ‘syndicalists’ political value system, had been cruelly exposed by the behaviour of the European working class after 1914. The creation of the French Communist Party in 1920 established the conditions for the rekindling of some aspects of the revolutionary syndicalist tradition, particularly the notion of the political (p.71) self-sufficiency of the proletariat. But the real source of this revival came not from within the French labour Page 7 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation movement, but from the turn taken by developments in the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin. The thrust of Bolshevik policy towards the Russian intelligentsia after the end of the Civil War was essentially characterized by appeasement. As noted earlier, Lenin (and, after his death in 1924, Bukharin) were fully aware of the cultural and technological backwardness of the country, and sought to establish a modus vivendi with the social élites of the prerevolutionary era. In keeping with this open approach, the Soviet authorities adopted a flexible attitude towards the principle of cultural creativity. In 1925, for example, a Central Committee resolution categorically rejected the idea of party intervention in literature, and stressed the value of artistic diversity.19 Ultimately, there was no better indicator of the relatively elevated status of the intelligentsia in Russia in the 1920s than the continuing domination of the Bolshevik ruling group by intellectuals. This predominance was also clearly marked in the leadership structures of the principal affiliated sections of the Third International, founded by Lenin in March 1919. The Stalinist revolution completely changed the social characteristics of the Soviet élite. The decimation of the Old Bolsheviks was part of a wider assault on the vestiges of the pre-revolutionary culture, and this onslaught against the Russian intelligentsia was carried out with devastating thoroughness.20 The Stalinist culture which emerged in the 1930s repudiated much of the classical cultural heritage. As the Soviet Communist Party's ‘Short Course’ affirmed in 1938, the social revolutions of the 1920s and 1930s had led to the emergence of a ‘new intelligentsia … the like of which the history of mankind had never known before’.21 These changes resulted in the consecration of a single measure for all artistic and creative forms: the will of the party, rhetorically disguised as the aesthetic standards of the Russian proletariat. The status of the intellectual was devalued thoroughly, and the activities of men of culture were conducted under the watchful (p.72) eyes of the authorities. The conditions of existence of the Soviet intelligent became worse than those which earlier generations of Russian intellectuals had experienced under the Tsarist regime. The precarious nature of life in the Stalin era was fully captured in the words of Dmitri Shostakovich: ‘the psychology of [the] intelligent had changed utterly. Fate made him fight for his existence, and he fought for it with all the fury of a former intelligent. He no longer cared who was to be glorified and who vilified … The important thing was to eat, to tear off as sweet a hunk of life as possible while you're still alive.’22 With the diffusion of Stalinist ideas and practices into the different national sections of the international communist movement, this devaluation of the role of intellectuals spread to many of the social and political institutions of the European labour movement. The impact of this new approach was experienced by the French Communists during the phase of ‘Bolshevization’, which endowed the party organization with ideological, institutional, and sociological features similar to those of the Stalinized Russian Communist Party.23 Ideologically, the pre-Stalinist PCF was a heterogenous assemblage inherited from the Tours era: Page 8 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation ‘20 pour cent de jauressisme, 10 pour cent de marxisme, 20 pour cent de léninisme, 20 pour cent de trotskysme, et 30 pour cent de confusionnisme’.24 The new orthodoxy, however, stressed the superior value of ideological unity: from the late 1920s public divisions between party leaders became increasingly rare. Institutionally, the Bolshevized organization took root in working-class communities with the establishment of the cellule d'entreprise. With the expansion of working-class membership during the Popular Front, these organizational changes transformed the social identity of the party.25 The most radical change which the advent of Stalinism brought to the classical Marxist paradigm, however, was the transformation (p.73) of the sociological characteristics of the leadership of Communist organizations. In traditional social-democratic organizations (this was as true of the German and Austrian social-democrats as of the Leninist Bolshevik party), the celebration of workingclass identity and values remained entirely compatible with the preservation of a political élite which was predominantly middle-class.26 Intellectual professions, accordingly, continued to occupy a central position in the political hierarchy. The Stalinist order which spread across European Communism after the late 1920s subverted this traditional equilibrium. In the case of the PCF, a new generation of working-class cadres rapidly rose to prominence, typified in such leaders as Maurice Thorez and Benoît Frachon.27 With this establishment of the principle of working-class leadership, the antediluvian syndicalist conception of the selfcontained character of proletarian political and cultural identity was also revived. To this extent, the PCF acted as a central vector for the perpetuation of autonomist tendencies in the French labour movement. But this syndicalist legacy was not passively reproduced in the internal scale of political values of the Thorezian party. One of the key tensions which underlay the relationship between the French Communist leadership and its intellectuals was that the PCF's political lineage always contained a plurality of conflicting elements. After the crystallization of its modern socio-political identity in the wake of the Popular Front, French Communism was marked by the influence of different political traditions, which gave the party's cultural identity an inherently contradictory character. This ambiguity was fully reflected in the place afforded to intellectuals in the social, political, and ideological representations of the PCF. In opposition to the syndicalist emphasis on direct action (based on instinct), the PCF always retained the classical Marxist conception of the centrality of theory (derived from reason) as the key determinant of political practice. Thus, political action had to be consistent with the premisses of Marxist theory. This requirement, in turn, necessitated the cultivation of a body of party (p.74) ideologues, and, more widely, the promotion of intellectual and cultural activities in the party. But these practices were always given a relatively subordinate status, which was amplified by the

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation imposition of the instrumental conception of cultural activity promoted by Stalinism. A similar tension developed in the PCF's outlook towards the national cultural heritage. As already noted,28 the Popular Front redefined the historical lineage of French Communism, incorporating classical French cultural values into the party's collective identity. In this sense, modern French Communism recognized the implicit Marxian claim of the universality of bourgeois culture, and remained committed to widening popular access to its products.29 Yet the continued celebration of the party's working-class identity conflicted with this recognition. Furthermore, even though the superiority of bourgeois culture was accepted, its natural bearers, the intellectuals, were consistently kept away from key positions in the party organization. These ambiguities were constantly apparent in French Communist practice throughout the party's existence, and partly reflected the contradictions which, as noted earlier, were inherent in the Marxist tradition.

The PCF's Appeal to Intellectuals As the above account has demonstrated, the legacy of the Marxist tradition to the question of the place of intellectuals in society, as well as their role in the revolutionary organization, was marked by considerable ambivalence. These ambiguities should be borne in mind when analysing the arguments provided by the French Communist authorities to account for the presence of sizeable cohorts of intellectuals in the party. The PCF's changing conceptions in this domain have to be observed in the light of three basic factors: the party's classification of intellectual occupations, its appreciation of the socio-economic conditions prevailing in each of these intellectual professions, and the political requirements of its class strategy. These parameters may be examined briefly. The PCF demonstrated a sustained interest in intellectuals as an (p.75) objective social category only in the wake of its transformation into a mass party during the Popular Front. Between 1924 and 1932 the party's narrow and sectarian focus on the most destitute sections of society precluded any appeal to broader intellectual groups. This was typically reflected in the political manifesto of the Communist deputy Desoblin in the legislative elections of 1928. The social groups targeted consisted of manual workers (both in industry and agriculture), tenants, women, soldiers and war veterans, and natives of French colonial territories.30 In the 1930s, however, the fate of intellectual groups became a source of specific concern to the PCF. The concept of the ‘travailleur intellectuel’, which had already appeared in Communist discourse in the early 1920s, was invoked in a more systematic fashion by party leaders to describe the pauperization suffered by intellectual groups.31 The official conception of the place of intellectuals in the social structure was spelled out by Laurent Casanova, the party's principal ideologue, in the postPage 10 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation Liberation years: ‘Le parti ne se borne pas à considérer les intellectuels comme des “spécialistes” de l'idéologie. Il les considère en outre sur le plan de classe. Comme tels les intellectuels représentent une fraction importante des classes moyennes.’32 During the 1960s and 1970s there was a marked expansion in the occupational groups included under the category of ‘intellectual’. At the Argenteuil meeting of the Central Committee (devoted to ideological and cultural questions) in 1966, the party mainly directed its attention towards the place of the ‘créateur’ in French society.33 This emphasis on creative activity was gradually abandoned, however, as the party extendedthe scope of the concept in the 1970s. By 1980, accordingly, the PCF's nomenclature of intellectual groups included students, technicians, cadres, higher civil servants, and even police and army officers.34 At this juncture, the ability to engage in creative (p.76) activity was no longer even a necessary condition for being regarded as an intellectual by the PCF. Despite these variations in the PCF's conception of cultural activity, the party's overall approach to the socio-economic conditions governing both creative and reproductive intellectual endeavours remained remarkably consistent after the 1930s. During the 1940s and 1950s, and again in the late 1970s, the party emphatically stressed the ineluctable tendency for intellectual work to be devalued under modern capitalism. At the Strasburg Congress of the PCF in 1947, party leader Maurice Thorez reminded the delegates that the subordination of culture was an inherent feature of the political strategy of the dominant classes: ‘les oligarchies financières ne peuvent maintenir leur domination qu'en pervertissant l'esprit, qu'en le réduisant à l'impuissance par le culte de l'individualisme et par l'anarchie intellectuelle.’35 In 1980 this capitalist machination was presented in equally apocalyptic tones. The Giscardian government was accused of preserving its political and economic power by pursuing ‘une stratégie de déclin’ whose only priority was to ‘accumuler les profits de quelques grandes firmes multinationales’. The ultimate objective of this strategy was, in all simplicity, to ‘ramener notre peuple à l'obscurantisme’.36 Normative undertones: objective interests, revolutionary traditions

Ultimately, however, the PCF's account of the place of intellectuals, both in society more generally and in the specific context of revolutionary politics, was always heavily laced with ideological imperatives. Thus, the party's definition of the terrain of cultural activity was always predicated upon the social imperatives of its political strategy. In this sense, the changes in the party's conception of the place of intellectuals in society often merely reflected shifts in the objective political requirements of the organization. Thus, the widening of the definition of intellectual activity in the 1960s and 1970s certainly corresponded to objective sociological trends, but it was more precisely connected to the development (p. 77) of the PCF's anti-monopolist alliance strategy, first outlined in the party's Manifeste de Champigny37 in 1968. In the PCF's view, the objective convergence of interests between the French working class and intellectual groups followed Page 11 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation from the economic exploitation commonly suffered by both categories. Thus, the establishment of a political alliance of workers and intellectuals became the cornerstone of PCF strategy during the 1960s, and was invoked with almost ritualistic regularity in all official party documents until the PCF's twenty-fifth Congress in 1985. The problem with this politically determined conception of the place of intellectuals in French society was that the PCF increasingly failed to draw the relevant distinction between prescription and description. Starting with the individual's presumed location in the social structure, many party interpretations of cultural activity concluded that workers and intellectuals shared a number of objective socio-economic interests. While this may or may not have been the case, such an observation in no way warranted the claim that these common concerns were actually motivating intellectuals to join the Communist Party. A typical example of such sophistry was provided in an article by Jacques Chambaz, the chairman of the Central Committee section de travail dealing with party intellectuals between 1974 and 1979. Beginning with an exposition of the way in which the economic crisis of the 1970s constituted ‘une entrave aux activités intellectuelles’, Chambaz argued that these constraints had established ‘des convergences nouvelles’ with the working class. Although some intellectuals were hesitant when faced by the prospect of a Communist government, most were preparing to side with the proletariat in the ‘bataille idéologique intense et féconde’ which would decide the issue.38 The assumption underlying Chambaz's claim was as clear as it was misguided. He was not arguing that intellectuals were becoming increasingly attracted to the PCF as a result of a subjective perception of their convergent interests with the proletariat. Rather, he identified these convergences on the basis of the notion (p.78) of objective interest. But this procedure represented a derivation of social fact from normative considerations. Had the Communist authorities taken a closer look at the actual beliefs of French intellectuals in the late 1970s, they would undoubtedly have realized that the paths of the PCF and the French intellectual community were becoming increasingly divergent. It is hard to resist the conclusion that Chambaz's suggestion to the contrary contained a strong element of a priori faith, and rested on a reductionist conception of intellectual behaviour which was more concerned with prescription than description. As such, it provided a useful indication of the PCF's strategic orientation, but it was a decidedly unstable starting-point for explaining why intellectuals might identify with the party. This ideological (mis)conception of the sources of intellectual affiliation to the PCF was by no means the exclusive preserve of Communist officialdom. It is interesting to note that even party intellectuals who became increasingly critical of the PCF's political strategy in the late 1970s and 1980s continued to rely on explanatory categories which were heavily laden with idealist assumptions. One Page 12 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation common example of such an ideological construct was the concept of a ‘revolutionary tradition’. Given the turbulent character of French political life since the end of the eighteenth century, the existence of a tempérament frondeur in French society was often assumed. Communist intellectuals often shared this assumption, and thus tended to regard the PCF as the modern institutional expression of this revolutionary political culture. In the 1980s, as the party's electoral and ideological fortunes declined, many intellectuals addressed the problems faced by the organization from the perspective of this revolutionary tradition. François Hincker, surveying the party's predicament in 1981, insisted that the decline of the PCF was in no way a reflection of the erosion of the French revolutionary spirit: ‘Je crois, en effet, que la France n'est pas un pays libéral, mais révolutionnaire, parce que l'égalité et la liberté y sont sœurs siamoises, inséparables sans périr l'une et l'autre, et qu'aujourd'hui c'est le mouvement ouvrier qui entretient cette flamme nourricière de l'idéologie française.’39 (p.79) Four years later the dissident Communist Pierre Juquin similarly identified a ‘potentiel révolutionnaire’40 in France, and warned that ‘les partis ne sont que des produits des luttes historiques, les partis communistes sont les plus récents. Aucun d'eux n'est le dépositaire exclusif et infaillible de la capacité d'action des peuples. C'est seulement si le courant passe dans les deux sens entre ces partis et les peuples qu'ils pourront accomplir des grandes choses.’41 For both men, this revolutionary tradition expressed the PCF's distinctive identity, and thus provided both a normative and a descriptive standard for evaluating its current condition. From a normative perspective, it was argued that a return to this revolutionary culture offered the only viable solution to the problems of the PCF. Hence Juquin's call for a redefinition of the form and content of the class struggle (‘rénover la politique’42), and Hincker's suggestion that the party should revert to its ‘true’ revolutionary traditions (‘un parti … national, démocratique, large [et] unitaire’43). The descriptive account of the PCF's ailments fed upon this normative undercurrent: the party's political and intellectual decline was thus explained by its departure from the revolutionary traditions which embodied its ‘true’ identity. The existence of a revolutionary tradition in France should not be dismissed out of hand. But such a tradition has to be grounded in concrete historical ideas and socio-economic experiences, rather than in cultural generalizations which often rest on untestable political and anthropological assumptions. If, however, the concept is used in the context of subjective orientations and attitudes towards the political realm, the existence of a tradition of revolutionary politics in France could be defended readily. For example, a diachronic study of the discourse of the French Left since 1789 would reveal the existence of a common stock of concepts, expressions, and symbols articulated around the idea of revolution.44 Similarly, a study of French social geography since the mid-nineteenth century Page 13 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation would point to recurrent patterns of radical political behaviour in particular localities, reflected in such (p.80) diverse political ideologies as Radicalism, Socialism, and Communism.45 Even in a purely institutional dimension, there is an obvious sense in which the principal organizations of the Left in the Fifth Republic are the inheritors of political traditions established by earlier French labour associations.46 The identification of these different dimensions of the French revolutionary tradition across time, however, is a fundamentally distinct enterprise from seeking to establish causal connections between past traditions and present intellectual currents and political institutions. The claims advanced by François Hincker and Pierre Juquin purported not only to demonstrate the existence of continuities in the French revolutionary tradition, but also to explain the modern predicament of the PCF by its failure to carry this tradition forward. This method, however, was vulnerable to number of criticisms. In the first instance, it was too Manichaean to capture the complexity of the process which required explanation. Ultimately, Hincker and Juquin presented a number of basic (and almost simplistic) oppositions between the contingent state of the PCF and its (alleged) paradigmatic condition: a historical dichotomy between a sectarian and a unitary tradition of French Communism; an institutional dichotomy between the true ‘culture communiste’ of the party rank and file and the cynical opportunism of the PCF leadership; and, finally, an ideological dichotomy between the correct ‘science’ of socialism and the actual political strategy of the party. By reducing the object of explanation to these schematic oppositions, this approach ironed out elements of discontinuity which could not be encompassed within its restrictive explanatory framework. Furthermore, the method deployed Hincker and Juquin begged the question of the survival of the revolutionary tradition in French society. Rather than taking the decline of the PCF as a possible indication of the demise of French political radicalism, the ‘critical’ Communists chose to explain the party's difficulties by its departure from the tradition in question. By making the existence of this revolutionary tradition the premiss of their argument, Hincker (p.81) and Juquin precluded the possibility of facing up to the potentially devastating conclusion that le roi est nu. As in the case of the official party writings mentioned earlier, this approach clearly confused prescription with description. Finally, independently of the previous two problems, the approach favoured by Hincker and Juquin foundered at another important methodological hurdle. The link between previous revolutionary traditions and the PCF was not presented as a contingent affinity, constantly put to the test of experience by its principal protagonists, but rather as a necessary and almost organic correlation. Seen from this vantage-point, the historical process acquired a teleological character. Its agents were no longer autonomous individuals with a particular location in space and time, but bearers of the immanent ideals of history. This is precisely Page 14 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation what Hincker seemed to suggest when he proclaimed that ‘le mouvement ouvrier révéla que la société bourgeoise, comme toute société, était transitoire’; and ‘le mouvement ouvrier en tant que tel … déstabilise l'ordre établi en sa base même’.47 At this point, the domain of history had been abandoned for the realm of metaphysics: the revolutionary tradition, in the eyes of the critical Communists, turned out to be nothing other than a process in which French society met with its appointed destiny.

Intellectuals as Autonomous Agents Despite the divergent and often contradictory perspectives adopted within the Marxist tradition, those operating within its framework generally shared the assumption that there was a definite relationship between an intellectual's location in the social structure and the nature of his political affiliations. But it was often alleged that intellectuals were distinctive as social actors precisely because their relationship to the class structure ceased to be a relevant factor in the determination of their political views. This conception of the intellectual as a free spirit was vulgarized in Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia, where intellectuals were described as ‘a social stratum which is, to a large degree, unattached to any social class and which is recruited from an increasingly (p.82) inclusive area of social life’.48 Unlike other classes in society, intellectuals possessed the ability to distance themselves from their social origins by virtue of their education and culture. Their political views represented a synthesis of different class perspectives, and, to this extent, could be described as ‘scientific’.49 The principal thrust of such a conception of the intellectual's politics resided in its alleged individuality. The subject was defined as a free agent whose political allegiances were essentially a function of his specific choices, and these could in no way be related to a particular class standpoint. Whilst allowances could be made for such sweeping characterizations in a sociological argument purporting to reveal the new destiny of the intellectual in the modern age,50 it may come as something of a surprise to find a similar approach adopted by the intellectual historian David Caute, whose Communism and the French Intellectuals, 1914–1960 was acclaimed as a seminal contribution to the subject. It is certain that this study contained many admirable features of the Anglo-Saxon academic tradition: a firm grasp of the subject, based on solid empirical scholarship; an accomplished narrative technique, grounded in a classical literary style; and, finally, a lucid and detached perspective, empathizing with the object of investigation without distorting either exposition or evaluative judgement. None the less, Caute's underlying conception of the relationship between the location of the intellectual in the social structure and the subject's political loyalties was strikingly similar to the Mannheim paradigm, despite the author's initial disclaimer:

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation There can be little doubt that the sociological approach to communism … is of strictly limited use when applied to intellectuals. The intellectual (p.83) in search of an allegiance is certainly confronted by a social situation which will shape his thinking, but the nature of his knowledge and the breadth of his perspective [sic] render him and his choices relatively free … The intellectual's way of life, taken on the average, and regardless of his political commitments, becomes essentially middle-class, or as some would prefer it, even ‘classless’… Ultimately, therefore, the act of political affiliation remains … one of personal conviction, personal psychology, personal choice.51 This conception implied that even subjective perceptions of class had no immediate bearing on the political affiliations of the Communist intellectual. From this perspective, his allegiance to the PCF was primarily a function of his bon vouloir.

It is arguable, however, that this conception distorted the social motivations underlying the intellectual's political affiliations, and, thus, undervalued the extent to which perceptions of social class informed his démarche. This view could be supported for at least three reasons. Firstly, the PCF was a political organization thoroughly permeated with the notion of class-consciousness. This feature always constituted a central dimension of the collective identity of the party, and appeared successfully to withstand a marked trend towards the rejection of class identification in France during the 1970s and 1980s. As a general illustration of this contention,52 it may be noted that the proportion of the entire French population which subjectively identified with a specific social class declined from 68 per cent to 56 per cent between 1976 and 1983. On the other hand, a survey carried out during the 1984 European elections reported that only four per cent of the Communist electorate refused to identify with a specific social category.53 This perception was certainly shared (and probably amplified) in the PCF counter-community, whose members generally exemplified the essential traits of the Communist mentalité in their most accentuated form. It will be granted that it was rather implausible that intellectuals should have identified with an inherently class-conscious political community without identifying with one of its central socio-political values. (p.84) This leads directly to the second reason for believing that conceptions of class had a strong bearing on the political affiliations of the Communist intellectual. The party, as the privileged intermediary of the working class, provided the possibility of substantive interaction with the peuple ouvrier. A quasi-mystical identification with the proletariat historically underpinned the allegiance of generations of intellectuals to the PCF: the extensive collection of memoirs of former Communists bore witness to the extent to which this sentiment was deeply ingrained in the collective mentality of left-wing intellectuals in France. Thus Hélène Parmelin, a party intellectual whose membership of the PCF extended over a period of thirty-five years between 1945 and 1980, spoke from experience when she stated that, for most Communist Page 16 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation intellectuals, the working class provided ‘la cause essentielle de leur appartenance au Parti’.54 The party counter-community often enabled the intellectual to step out of the immediate confines of his communauté d'appartenance and actively participate in the social and political rituals encompassed in the ordinary life of a Communist cell. These could range from the organization of practical tasks, such as the sale of the party Sunday newspaper, L'Humanité-Dimanche, to the discussion of the draft resolution of the next party Congress or Conference, sent to all party cells by the Secretariat. These considerations suggested that there was at least one straightforward explanation for the Communist intellectual's affiliation to a class-conscious political community: his identification with a particular class which, in traditional Marxian mythology, embodied the prospects for the redemption of humanity. A hardened sceptic might still remain unconvinced. Indeed, it could be argued that Communist intellectuals' identification with a class-conscious countercommunity was effectively the direct consequence of their own lack of social roots. Deprived of the psychological security which attachment to the social structure gave to traditional social classes, these intellectuals, so this argument would run, sought to offset this défaut d'origine by fastening on to a community which provided a genuine sense of kinship. Jeannine Verdès-Leroux suggested as much in her description (p.85) of the post-Liberation generation of Communist intellectuals: ‘Les intellectuels communistes de la guerre froide ont, en masse, renoncé à l'expression personelle pour se fondre dans une communauté qui leur procurait sécurité, confiance, certitude.’55 But even if this argument were correct (and in spite of its irrationalist undertones), it would simply provide further confirmation that intellectuals were concerned by their location in the social structure. But the matter cannot be allowed to rest at that. It will be contended that the notion of class provided party intellectuals not only with a negative impulsion towards political affiliation with the PCF, as would be illustrated by Verdès-Leroux's argument, but also, and in a much more fundamental sense, with a positive stimulus for identification with the counter-community. This is the third reason for rejecting the claim that the notion of social class was in no way related to the Communist intellectual's political allegiances. As intimated earlier, the specific role attributed to intellectuals in the PCF ultimately depended on the party's analysis of the dynamics of class relations in France. This evaluation directly informed the party's general political strategy, which, in turn, dictated the adoption of a specific approach towards intellectuals. Although the PCF' evaluation of the dynamics of class relations in France changed frequently over time, intellectuals were (after the 1920s) consistently cultivated as a social category. What did show significant variations, however, were the conditions under which the party believed this ralliement Page 17 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation should occur. During certain periods of high sectarianism56 Communist intellectuals were expected to abandon their distinctive social identity by adopting the social and political attitudes of the working class. Hence the famous exhortation, barked in the ear of many a recalcitrant party intellectual: ‘rallier au plus vite toutes les positions idéologiques et politiques de la classe ouvrière’.57 At other times, and quite notably after the late 1950s, the PCF took great pains to stress the fact that intellectuals would be welcomed into the party on their own terms. They would be (p.86) accepted as bearers of a distinct social identity, and encouraged to make full contributions to the collective intellectual life of the party. This positive evolution of the PCF certainly helped to change dominant intellectual perceptions of the party. The recognition that intellectuals could make a distinctive contribution to party life certainly encouraged an increasingly greater number of French intellectuals to identify with the PCF during the 1960s and 1970s. Hence the paradox which, as noted earlier, was inherent in Marxism: Communist intellectuals were attracted to the party organization as a result of both a specific conception of their own role as social actors and also of a sentiment of empathy with a social class which appeared to embody the revolutionary tradition in France. The underlying tension between these two distinct considerations will be examined further in a subsequent chapter.58 In sum, the suggestion that conceptions of social class had no direct bearing on the political affiliations of Communist intellectuals should be reconsidered. It has been argued that their allegiance to a social and political community which was almost saturated with class-consciousness was an immediate indication of the subjective relevance of the notion of class. The PCF could also provide an appropriate forum for engaging in substantive interaction with members of other social categories: from this perspective, the working class constituted an essential focus of the intellectuals' identification. In a more elementary sense, however, the appeal of the PCF was predicated upon the belief, directly encouraged by party pronouncements, that the counter-community offered genuine scope for contributing to the collective life of the party. If this recognition of a distinct social status facilitated the intellectuals' convergence towards the French Communist Party, it followed that they desired to be given such consideration, and perceived themselves as actors with a distinctive social identity. Thus, the Mannheimian approach does not provide a promising point of departure for examining the circumstances which led generations of intellectuals to identify with the PCF, as it ignores one of the central determinants of their social identity. The next section will consider one of the

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation most influential conceptions of the roots of intellectual affiliation to the PCF: the functionalist paradigm. (p.87) Functionalist perspectives

The most sophisticated functionalist perspective on the PCF was articulated by Georges Lavau, who provided a general synthesis of his interpretation of the role of the party in A quoi sert le Parti Communiste Français? Lavau's central contention was that the PCF serviced the needs of those sections of French society which could not otherwise be integrated into the social and political system. By providing this disaffected minority with an institutional platform from which to air its grievances, the party assisted in its socialization into the structures of established order. To this extent, the PCF unwittingly contributed to the legitimation of the very system it purported to undermine. Thus, its principal role in society was to occupy a ‘fonction tribunitienne’,59 as befitted an institution which gave malintegrated social actors a stake in a system from which they believed themselves to be excluded. Although he made it plain that this functionalist argument applied principally to the working class in France, Lavau clearly implied that its scope could be extended to account for the causes of intellectual affiliation to the party. Lavau identified five main sources of intellectual affiliation to the PCF. Firstly, following an argument elaborated by Jacqueline Mer, he argued that intellectuals were attracted by the epic quality of the communist ideal, which the party embodied even in its daily practices. These individuals ‘ont vécu et continuent à vivre le communisme comme une belle civilisation, comparable à celle des bâtisseurs de cathédrale’.60 The implication here, although not expressly articulated, was that, for these intellectuals, the counter-community represented a substitute for a mode of existence which was denied to them in civil society. The PCF acted as a shelter for these deprived individuals, enabling them to experience, in concrete form, at least some aspects of the ideal to which they aspired. Secondly, Lavau argued that intellectuals were attracted to the party for doctrinal or ideological reasons of a very specific kind. Indeed, in his view, these individuals were far less fascinated (p.88) by the actual postulates of Marxist theory concerning man and society than by the internal consistency of the philosophical system from which these pronouncements were derived. This was a classic explanation of communism's appeal to intellectuals. It was often claimed that an inherent interest in abstract classificatory schemes made intellectuals especially receptive to the formal rigour of a systematic doctrine such as communism. Referring to the Stalinist brand of Marxism in particular, the poet Czeslaw Milosz warned against ‘the illusion of full knowledge’61 which could be procured by the intellectual's identification with a theory which claimed to provide the ultimate explanation for all social phenomena. The underlying premiss, again, was the creative individual's craving for a form of intellectual Page 19 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation harmony which was not manifested in his ordinary or even professional intercourse with his fellow men. The official ideology of the PCF, therefore, provided at least an intellectual alternative to the chaos of everyday existence. Thirdly, Lavau made the traditional claim that the PCF enabled some intellectuals to break away from the social isolation which necessarily followed from their professional occupations. Thus, their participation in the general activities of the Communist political community enabled them to encounter ‘des gens d'autres catégories sociales’.62 This view rested, to some extent, on the assumption that the intellectual was otherwise deprived of social contact with the broader networks of the civil society. By joining the PCF counter-community, he gave himself the opportunity of escaping from the narrow confines of his occupational horizons. From this perspective, the party exercised a socializing function similar to that of intermediate social institutions. Lavau's fourth suggestion was that many intellectuals drifted towards the PCF as a result of their inherent disposition to criticize the social order. This was an immediate variant of his central hypothesis concerning the fonction tribunitienne of the party, and implied that intellectuals used the PCF as a platform from which to articulate their critique of a system from which they were estranged. The party's radical and almost systematic opposition to the structures of established order, according to this view, enabled (p.89) the intellectual to incorporate his ‘philosophic du non’63 into a wider stream of critical discourse, thereby giving a semblance of social justification to an enterprise which was inherently narcissistic in character. Finally, Lavau argued that some intellectuals were psychologically attracted to an institution which proudly defined itself as a repository of a specific social and political faith, whose principles were to be zealously guarded against the attacks of the infidel. The particularly pugnacious approach of the PCF, which was reflected in all its dealings with an environment which it believed to be inherently hostile, was marvellously suited to the intellectual's imperative quest for certainty. The moral and political absolutism of the party provided a secure foundation for his social and political beliefs, and a clear opportunity, eagerly accepted by many individuals, to exercise a form of intellectual terrorism against the ‘vipères lubriques’ who ventured to question the revealed truths of the party doctrine.64 A synthesis of these five propositions amounted to a complex and subtle vision of the sources of intellectual identification with the PCF. It is interesting to note, however, the extent to which these functionalist arguments appeared to be predicated upon psychological propositions. As a functionalist, Lavau approached a social phenomenon by taking the individual's role as the fundamental unit of analysis, and this role was deemed to be constituted by the norms which governed collective behaviour in society. Lavau clearly believed Page 20 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation that the Communist intellectual's support for the PCF could only be explained adequately by an analysis of the ways in which specific norms impinged upon the consciousness of the individual. Hence the psychological undertones of his explanation of the sources of intellectual affiliation to the party. The intellectual, in his view, had various needs: the identification with a heroic ideal, a logically consistent doctrine, a social milieu different from his own, an institution which expressed his own rejection of established order, and, finally, a system of belief resting on secure foundations. These psychological needs could arise, it may be surmised, only as a result of the absence, in the intellectual's immediate existence, of the conditions required (p.90) for their fulfilment. The PCF, therefore, acted as an institutional palliative to these problems, and provided the malintegrated individual with a means of instilling an element of order into an existence otherwise marked by contingency and isolation. Functional analysis: a critical evaluation

A general feature of the functionalist method adopted by Lavau should be noted here: a disposition to treat the object of analysis not as an isolated entity, but rather as a necessary component of the social system. Thus, the particularly distinctive facet of this methodology was its propensity to analyse particular social units from the perspective of the general structure of society. The object of the analysis was to show how the existence of a specific institution affected other aspects of the social and political structure, and ultimately contributed to its general stability. It followed that the functionalist was primarily interested in the external effects of particular institutions, rather than in the nexus of conditions which might explain their existence in the first place. To put it another way, these institutions could have a significant existence only if they served a particular function in the social structure. This essential preoccupation with social consequence was manifested in Lavau's approach. The implicit starting-point of his analysis was the general equilibrium of the social and political system in France, and his argument purported to demonstrate the different ways in which the PCF contributed to the preservation of this equilibrium. From this perspective, it was postulated that the party's fonction tribunitienne served as a means of legitimating the social order in the eyes of the French working class. The PCF appeared, paradoxically, as a bulwark against social revolution, since it provided alienated sections of the community with a mechanism for airing their grievances against society without fundamentally threatening l'ordre établi. From the specific perspective of this argument, Lavau's functional analysis of the sources of intellectual affiliation to the PCF suggested that the party provided intellectuals with an institutional structure which catered for their social, psychological, and affective requirements. Although Lavau did not explicitly draw this inference, his argument implied that the intellectual's contact with the party produced functional political consequences similar to those which (p.91) obtained for the working-class member of the PCF: the critique of capitalist society was confined Page 21 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation to the formal channels provided by the organization, thus postponing indefinitely any practical approach towards social revolution. The postulates derived from the functionalist methodology used by Lavau raised a number of important problems, which suggested that this approach obscured rather than illuminated the subject of investigation. The first difficulty bore upon the inherent functionalist tendency to analyse particular social units from the perspective of the general equilibrium of a social system. If the PCF's function was identified as the socialization of the working class, and the fulfilment of the social and psychological needs of the intellectual, it had to be assumed that these roles were necessary from the point of view of the general stability of the system as a whole. In other words, if the system did not require institutions to cater for the requirements of malintegrated individuals, the PCF would have no real cause for existence. The problem with such a systemic view is that the particular functions attributed to the institution could well indicate the ways in which the latter contributed to the preservation of the general stability of a social system: from this angle, Lavau's postulates, although questionable in some respects, were extremely stimulating. But these propositions constituted a comprehensive explanation of the motivations underlying intellectual affiliation to the party only if it was believed that individuals identified with the functional effects of the institution: this, however, was not immediately obvious. It would be hard to show that intellectuals intentionally supported the PCF on the basis of an explicit identification with a heroic ideal, a logically consistent doctrine, or a securely founded system of belief. It may be hypothesized that they experienced these needs, and that the latter appeared to be satisfied by membership of the party, but it could not be inferred that their affiliation was a direct function of these requirements. The heart of this problem lay with the functionalist's tendency to take roles rather than individuals as the fundamental unit of analysis. In the act of political affiliation, however, individuals were not commonly motivated by the consideration of the social roles they performed in society (even though these clearly have an independent existence which should be accounted for). It may be contended, therefore, that a functionalist approach could be of (p.92) interest to those who seek to understand how an institution such as the PCF could contribute to the reinforcement of the social and political structure in France. It was, however, far less rewarding in its attempt to explain the sources of the individual's political affiliations, as it tended to overlook the intentional and explicit motivations of the social agent, and concentrated instead on the systemic effects of the role performed by that agent. The second problem with the functionalist methodology followed directly from the first, and bore upon the explanation of what might cause a particular social unit to change. Since this unit was analysed from the perspective of the general stability of the social system, it was assumed that changes to particular units Page 22 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation were a direct consequence of the functional exigencies of the system. In this sense, the development of an institution such as the PCF appeared to be dictated by the objective demands of the social and political structure. If this institution (or any of the particular units of which it was composed) changed, it was postulated that these transformations were the immediate effect of changes in the requirements of the system. Thus, the marked decline in working-class identification with the PCF since 1978 might be explained by the fact that the party had fulfilled its objective function in society: to facilitate the integration of the proletariat into French society. Since this functional requirement had been completed, the party could no longer serve as a pole of attraction to actors who had ceased to suffer from acute social malintegration. If, similarly, the level of intellectual support for the PCF was progressively eroded, as happened after the late 1970s, the functionalist would assume that the intellectual had found another institutional means of satisfying his social, psychological, and affective needs. But this does not necessarily follow: there was no a priori reason why a change in the level of intellectual identification with the PCF should be occasioned by systemic requirements alone. It is certainly plausible to suggest that the general equilibrium of the social and political structure may have no causal effect upon such a change in the properties of a social unit. This change could well have occurred as a result of transformations which were internal to the unit itself, but the exploration of this possibility would be precluded by the inherent methodological constraints of the functionalist approach. Thus, two unsatisfactory alternatives presented themselves: either particular change was (p.93) dictated by the system, in which case it could be accounted for, or the general equilibrium remained stable, and no explanation was required. But it was surely possible for a particular change to occur without the functional requirement of the social structure: the functionalist approach, however, could not allow the identification of these subterranean movements. Finally, it can be argued that the functionalist approach was not particularly geared towards the immediate identification of change within particular social units, but tended only to acknowledge the existence of such transformations ex post facto. This analytical lag should be understood in terms of the conjunction of two features of the methodology: the tendency to analyse particular units from the perspective of the general stability of the system, and the proposition that individuals and groups in society performed specific roles, defined in terms of support for a cluster of norms. The functional analyst, as shown earlier, could identify change in a particular unit only if it was effectively caused by the functional exigencies of the system: so long as these requirements were not deemed to have been altered, therefore, it had to be assumed that adhesion to the norms which defined these roles in the system had remained unchanged.

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation This rather static conception resulted, at times, in a tendency to take individual and group identification with a norm for granted. To use an example from this particular domain of analysis, it might be accepted that many intellectuals in France were once attracted to the PCF as a consequence of their psychological need to believe in a transcendental ideal. This mental disposition was acknowledged in the memoirs of a large number of intellectuals who identified with Communism during the Stalinist era. But this postulate, although possibly65 valid for a specific historical epoch, could not be generalized over time. The Communist intellectual in (p.94) the late 1970s may have preserved a certain nostalgia for the days when party members believed in des lendemains qui chantent, and even retained some metaphysical trappings in his relationship with the party, as will be seen subsequently, but none the less it seems unreasonable to suggest that this disposition still constituted the essential foundation for his affiliation to the party. This stands as a good example of an analytical lag produced by the methodological thrust of functionalism: the identification, as a norm, of a belief which was (if anything) a relic of a bygone age. It may be concluded that the functionalist methodology used in Lavau's work does not facilitate the analysis of the sources of intellectual identification with the PCF. This approach undervalued the intentions of the agent, disregarded the internal dynamics of the institution to which he was affiliated, and tended to assume, rather than to explain, his adhesion to social and political norms. The political determinants of intellectual affiliation

In contrast to the structural complexities of functionalism, many analysts sought to examine the phenomenon of intellectual affiliation to the PCF from a more empirical perspective. It was postulated that most members of the PCF, irrespective of their social origins, shared the party's fundamental political objective: the establishment of a post-capitalist social and political order. If this was the case, there was no reason, a priori, to assume that the intellectual was any different from the mass of his fellow party members. His decision to support the PCF was informed by a strictly political sense of empathy with this basic objective of the movement. This was the implication of Raymond Aron's contention that ‘Communism in France is a political problem, not a spiritual one.’66 The validity of this approach may be assessed by examining the extent to which such arguments were used by Communist intellectuals to justify their membership of the party. The case of François Hincker may serve as illustration. Hincker was a prominent member of the appareil, who was to play an important role in the intra-party dispute after 1978. His reasons for identifying (p.95) with the PCF were quite straightforward, albeit expressed in the characteristic Communist langue de bois:

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation Je suis communiste. Parce que le système de structures et de valeurs, disons bourgeoises, constitue dans la société où je me trouve un ordre établi contredisant ma conviction intellectuelle, éthique, selon laquelle c'est en se socialisant, en se cultivant, c'est à dire en maîtrisant l'ensemble de ses conditions d'existence, que l'individu devient plus libre … Parce que je sais qu'à tout projet il faut un instrument approprié à la tâche, avec son mode d'emploi; et que donc au mouvement ouvrier révolutionnaire il faut un parti politique.67 Hincker's justification of his membership of the party was logically consistent: his affiliation to the organization rested upon the belief that society needed to be changed, and that the PCF was the only adequate institutional vehicle for the attainment of this political objective.

It will be noted that this dimension of the intellectual's identification with the party was not emphasized by the functionalist approach. As seen earlier, Lavau argued that the PCF's radical and almost systematic opposition to the structures of established order appealed to malintegrated intellectuals, who empathized with an institution which seemed to articulate their own rejection of an abhorrent social order. But this suggested that the party only served as a negative pole of attraction. The full implication of Lavau's argument was that the estranged intellectual identified with a revolutionary organization as a means of confirming, rather than disputing, his social condition. Alienated from the community, but also incapable of moving beyond a negative critique of society, the hapless party intellectual was condemned to his fate, with the limited boon of sharing the company of others whose condition was equally pathological. This sombre portrayal misrepresented the fundamental sources of the PCF's appeal to French intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s, primarily as a result of ignoring the importance of the political considerations which underlay the wave of adhesions to the party during this period. The general political context of the Cold War, which saw the PCF entrenched in a defiant posture of total opposition to the social and political order, may well have served to attract into the party a cohort of intellectuals (p.96) whose political outlook could be reduced, as Lavau argued, to a philosophie du non. This proposition would still need to be empirically tested, but it is at least intuitively plausible that the PCF's rigid division of the world into two camps produced a type of intellectual affiliation based on an equally negative and uncompromising conception of the political world. Two decades later, however, the political setting had changed significantly, and the party was now actively committed to a strategy of unity with the other components of the French Left. This quest would ultimately result in the Programme commun de gouvernement, a detailed blueprint for the extensive transformation of French society, which symbolized the party's determination to play a positive role in what Marx called the ‘administration of things’.68 The intellectuals who turned to the PCF during this period reflected fully this general aspiration towards social change. As will be seen throughout Page 25 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation this narrative, the public statements and writings of party intellectuals after March 1978 were underpinned by a fervent aspiration to a changement de société. It is difficult to see how an optimistic disposition of this kind could be compatible with negative attitudes of resignation. Thus, the proposition put forward by Lavau, which plainly implied the latter, was clearly inadequate.69 Practice and abstraction

The proposition that intellectuals were attracted into the PCF as a result of their positive aspirations towards social change may be refined further by distinguishing between two different types of support for the party, which might be defined—purely for the purposes of convenience—as the practical and the philosophical. Many intellectuals may indeed have believed that active participation in the political life of the counter-community was the essential way in which they could contribute to the process of social change. This practical type of intellectual enthusiast was primarily concerned with the effectiveness of his party's contribution to the process of social and political change. His allegiance to (p.97) the PCF was directly conditioned by a belief in the party's ability to deliver society from capitalist oppression. Other intellectuals, however, took a more detached view of the political process. These were the ones Annie Kriegel described as the inheritors of the Dreyfusard tradition. Their principal characteristics were a ‘goût de l'abstraction’ and an ‘aptitude à réduire la complexité du réel concret à des notions, à des essences, à des épures, à des principes …’.70 Their essential interest lay less with the practical achievements of the PCF in society in the short or even middle term, than with the fundamental significance of party membership from a worldhistorical perspective. This Olympian conception was given a classic formulation by the Communist poet Louis Aragon in a message to the party newspaper L'Humanité two years before his death in 1982: ‘Avoir été communiste, pour moi, ça a été le refus de confondre les petites histoires avec la grande.’71 To those whose ears were not generally attuned to flatulent pronouncements of this nature, this statement might seem entirely devoid of substance. An analytical thinker might well wonder about the distinctiveness of a grande histoire which appeared not to consist of a sum of all the petites histoires of humanity. This proposition can be understood only as an expression of a quasi-Hegelian understanding of the dynamics of human society, which stipulated that history had an ultimately rational purpose: the liberation of the human spirit through the emergence of individual self-consciousness. This teleological conception of human history did not require the type of contingent evidence which was often a prerequisite for confirming the political allegiance of the practically minded intellectual. As long as the belief that human society had an immanent end was internalized,

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation immediate historical occurrences became mere ‘twists in the dialectic’, to borrow an expression used by George Lichtheim. An intellectual who supported such a position, therefore, did not judge the PCF according to the goods it could deliver (to himself, to the oppressed, or even to society as a whole). He was satisfied with identifying the party as one of the instruments of a wider historical purpose, and as long as his belief in the latter (p.98) remained unshaken, his loyalty to the institution was guaranteed. It should be noted that this conception of the abstract intellectual supporter of the party is at variance with Lavau's approach to the question. From this perspective, it was not the logical structure of the doctrine which appealed to the intellectual, but the specific philosophical content of the Marxian conception of history. This type of intellectual was not necessarily concerned with the logical consistency of his beliefs: what was of primary importance was his faith in a particular ideal, an ideal which membership of the PCF simply served to reflect and confirm. The professional dimension

Finally, the uneasy combination of political and socio-professional considerations may be discerned in the identification of some intellectuals with the PCF. The practical or philosophical party supporter was motivated, as noted, by altruistic and elevated considerations. He empathized with the PCF either because he thought the party could change society, or because he believed that the party was one of the institutions empowered by history to lead humanity to its appointed destiny. But such general political considerations could also be compatible with a more egotistical approach, through which the intellectual viewed the institution as a professional arena of competition rather than as a forum for collaboration with his fellow-party member. This competitive dimension of intellectual affiliation to the party can be understood only if a basic distinction is made between external and internal intellectuals.72 External (or ‘autonomous’) intellectuals were those who joined the party but retained their professional affiliations outside the organization: for example, members of the pedagogic profession, writers, and artists. ‘Internal’ intellectuals, on the other hand, were those whose exclusive occupation consisted of work for party organizations. These intellectuels de parti often came from working-class backgrounds: the party, from this point of view, served as an instrument of upward mobility.73 Thus, the individual's identification with the party could also be explained by self-regarding considerations. This competitive and (p.99) potentially conflicting dimension of the intellectual's interaction within the party operated at different levels, depending on the intellectual's location in the institutional structure of the party organization. At one level, the PCF represented an instrument of upward mobility to a sizeable mass of intellectuals of workingPage 27 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation class, peasant, and petty-bourgeois origins, for whom party membership was a means of abandoning an immediate milieu characterized by social deprivation and intellectual constriction. As they moved up the organizational ladder, these permanents often vied with one another for positions of power and responsibility within the party apparatus, with the result that their strictly political activity became at least partly conditioned by considerations of personal career advancement. At another level, it should be noted that competition for the sympathy and approval of the leadership was often rife among high-ranking intellectuals. What could be at stake was control of a specific area of activity within the organization, or even the canonization of a leading intellectual's particular interpretation of a philosophical or theoretical issue. An illustration of this type of confrontation is provided by the great dispute, from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, between Roger Garaudy and Louis Althusser over the validity of a ‘humanist’ interpretation of Marxism. Although these quasitheological arguments appeared to be divorced from any immediate practical considerations, the entire episode was fraught with careerist undertones. In defending his particular interpretation of Marxist theory, Garaudy was obviously seeking to preserve his established position as the principal Communist philosopher, whose views were consecrated in official party doctrine. Garaudy's theoretical legitimacy constituted the basis of his membership of the Bureau Politique,74 and provided him with a clear source of authority and patronage over a broad network of party institutions: first the theoretical review of the party, the Cahiers du communisme, which he edited until 1960; then the PCF research institute, the Centre d'Études et de Recherches Marxistes, which he directed for most of the following decade. On the other hand, Althusser was simply an ordinary party intellectual whose immediate influence (p.100) was limited, before the mid-1960s, to a narrow and sectarian circle of militants purs et durs (most of whom had come under his influence at the École Normale Supérieure). The dispute over ‘humanism’ was, in a fundamental sense, a zerosum conflict between individuals seeking either to defend or to promote their personal position within the party organization at each other's expense. Given the party's traditional tendency to encourage uniformity and cohesion in these matters, Garaudy's commanding position would have been undermined severely by a defeat at the hands of the Althusserian zealots, who would have considerably enhanced their ability to control the theoretical output of the PCF.75 It should be emphasized, however, that this competitive and careerist dimension of intellectual activity in the party should not be viewed as an alternative to the political approach of the practical or philosophical intellectual, but rather as its potential corollary. It would be misleading to establish a crude dichotomy between those intellectuals who supported the PCF for selfless and idealist reasons, and those whose allegiance to the party was essentially dictated by selfregarding considerations. In reality, political and professional inducements were Page 28 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation often inexorably intertwined in the intellectual's approach, and these concerns could reinforce one another. This chapter set out to examine the underlying grounds for intellectual affiliation to the PCF since the 1930s. To this end, various theoretical perspectives on the political roles of intellectuals were subjected to critical examination. The Marxist tradition was shown to have accommodated radically divergent conceptions of (p.101) the social identity of intellectuals and their corresponding place in the political arena. Some of these inherent contradictions in Marxist doctrine were clearly reflected in French Communist attitudes and practices. The Mannheimian and functionalist perspectives were examined next, and each was found to have disregarded essential features of the Communist intellectual's social identity. Finally, the adhesion of intellectuals was viewed from two standpoints: the appeal of the PCF's ideology (both in terms of practical goals and abstract principles), and the importance of socio-professional considerations, particularly for intellectuals of working-class origin. A synthesis of these contending approaches would suggest that four general parameters need to be taken into account in any explanation of the roots of intellectual affiliation to the PCF. French intellectuals were always conscious of the international ramifications of Communism, and the development of the Soviet system after 1917 exercised a strong appeal on their political imagination. From a sociological point of view, intellectuals also identified with the Communist Party as a means of cultivating links with other social groups; the working class represented a central focus of their aspirations for wider social interaction. Marxist theory (or rather the particular blend of Marxism, Leninism, and Jacobinism which was so unique to the political culture of the French Left) provided an ideological dimension to the identification of intellectuals with the PCF. Finally, the Communist Party organization gave French intellectuals a sense of collective purpose, in a political community characterized by a marked sense of kinship and fraternity. What do these considerations suggest about the relationship between the Communist tradition and the wider republican practice of intellectual intervention in politics, outlined in the previous chapter? Communist intellectuals shared a number of features with the (radical) republican tradition. They evolved in the same socio-geographical context, and often shared the same occupational horizons. They demonstrated the same level of robust political commitment as the Sartrian intellectuel engagé. More generally, they operated within an ideological framework which was heavily dependent on Marxian categories. Their relationship with the Republican state was characterized by a sense of ambivalence: although they often rejected its immediate undertakings, (p.102) they ultimately rallied to its defence when its integrity appeared threatened. These affinities were significant enough to warrant the suggestion that Communist intellectuals operated in a broader intellectual community, Page 29 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation whose members shared a number of essential values about the political and cultural spheres. But the distinctive feature of Communist intellectuals, which makes them especially worthy of study, was the juxtaposition of this particular disposition with two other political traditions which contradicted some of the essential principles of republicanism. The centrality of the working class in the PCF's social and political value system forced Communist intellectuals away from the classical republican notion that cultural competence was a sufficient condition for the exercise of political leadership. More fundamentally, perhaps, Communist intellectuals differed from the radical intellectuals in the nature of their partisan attachment. The wider republican tradition of intervention in politics was based on the idealist premiss that intellectuals had a duty to defend universal principles and values, which were (almost by definition) not the exclusive property of any political party. While Communist intellectuals often shared these values, they were also required to demonstrate their loyalty to their organization. Serious dilemmas often resulted whenever these conflicting principles clashed, and these were often (particularly before the 1960s and 1970s) resolved by sacrificing the wider principles on the altar of the esprit de parti. It is for this reason (as well as the ‘ultramontaine’ character of the PCF) that Claude Nicolet concluded that French Communism could not be considered to represent an integral expression of the classical republican tradition.76 Three final remarks may be added. Firstly, enough has been said to suggest that Communist intellectuals did not constitute an undifferentiated entity. As will be seen in subsequent chapters, there were always variations in the intellectual physiognomy of the party. The Communist intellectual could be a remarkably (p. 103) diverse political creature, depending on whether one chose to highlight variations in space (the higher or lower levels of the party organization); time (the synchronic features of a specific political generation, or the diachronic dimension of the phenomenon of intellectual affiliation to the PCF throughout the twentieth century); temperament (the considerable ideological nuances between intellectuals); occupation (intellectual Communists, who retained an independent profession outside the party, and the intellectuels de parti, who were clerical employees of the organization); and, finally, of course, nationality: the French Communist intellectual may have shared many common features with his colleagues in other countries, but the relative importance of each of the four parameters mentioned above varied considerably in relation to local specificities. Thus, the factors which made membership of the Communist Party an attractive proposition to a Latin American intellectual in modern times differed in several respects from those which served to draw generations of French intellectuals into the Communist orbit.

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation The central implication of these differences is obvious, but deserves to be stated explicitly none the less. No single explanation of the sources of intellectual identification with French Communism is likely to suffice to cover the wide range of institutional, ideological, and sociological variables which shaped the process over time. Recognition of this diversity does not prohibit the use of general explanatory categories, but should simply caution against the use of certain types of generalization. Thus, the tendency to regard individuals as categories with unique social or political attributes should be avoided at all costs. Communist intellectuals were not the agents of any teleological design, but real men and women whose views evolved in a specific political setting. This conception of social explanation will be reflected fully in the subsequent narrative. This points directly to the individuality of the subjects of this study. At a certain level of generality, the roots of intellectual affiliation to the party may be identified in terms of the parameters mentioned earlier (the Soviet connection, empathy with the working class, the appeal of Marxist ideology, and the cohesive force of the vanguard organization). But the explanation of specific cases requires closer scrutiny to determine the relative significance of each of these variables. A similar approach will be adopted with (p.104) regard to explaining the causes of intellectual disaffiliation from the PCF. Hence, a privileged role will be given to intentional modes of explanation. In other words, the beliefs, responses, and practices of Communist intellectuals will occupy a central position in the narrative structure, thus giving preference to the perspective of the principal actors. Of course, social explanation cannot rely exclusively on the notion of intentionality. But the relegation of other variables (class, occupation, wider ideological currents) to a contextual position ultimately forces evaluation of the intellectuals's political behaviour on the basis of their own narratives. Ce n'est que justice: after all, intellectuals have a stronger claim than most other social groups to be evaluated principally (if not exclusively) on their public output. Notes:

(1) Jacqueline Mer, Le Parti de Maurice Tborez ou le bonheur communiste français (Paris: Payot, 1977), 198. (2) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, Volume 5 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), 77. (3) Ibid. vi (1976), 487. (4) Ibid. iii (1975), 187; emphasis in text. (5) Ibid. vi. 468; emphasis added.

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation (6) For further discussion of their role, see Shlomo Avineri, ‘Marx and the Intellectuals’, journal of the History of Ideas, 28/2 (Apr.–June 1967). (7) V. I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done? (Peking: Foreign Languages, 1975), 29. (8) Ibid. 138. The socio-professional composition of the pre-Stalinist Bolshevik leadership showed a marked preponderance of intelligenty over other occupational categories. (9) See Neil Harding, Lenin's Political Thought: Theory and Practice in the Democratic and Socialist Revolutions (London: Macmillan, 1983), ii. 190–1. (10) Antonio Gramsci, ‘The Formation of Intellectuals’, in The Modern Prince and Other Writings (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1957), 122. (11) As noted by Leszek Kolakowski, in ‘Intellectuals against Intellect’, Daedalus, Summer 1972, p. 9. (12) See Joseph V. Femia, Gramsci's Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 214. (13) Georges Sorel, Matériaux d'une théorie du prolétariat (Paris: Riviére, 1929), 97. (14) See Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, i (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 209. (15) See George Lichtheim, Marxism in Modern France (New York: Columbia, 1966), 24–30. (16) From an article in La Bataille syndicate, quoted in Henri Dubief, Le Syndicalisme révolutionnaire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1969), 175. (17) Quoted in F. F. Ridley, Revolutionary Syndicalism in France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 268. (18) See Jean Bron, Histoire du mouvement ouvrier français, ii (Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières, 1970), 79–80. (19) See Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 205. (20) See Boris Kagarlitsky, The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present (London: Verso, 1989), 89–94. (21) See History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing, 1939), 344.

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation (22) See Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, ed. S. Volkov (London: Faber, 1981), 135. (23) For an account of this period through the eyes of a Komintern agent, see Jules Humbert-Droz, De Lénine à Staline: Dix ans au service de l'Internationale Communiste 1921–1931 (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1971). (24) Article in Cahiers du bolshevisme, 28 Nov. 1924; quoted in Nicole Racine and Louis Bodin, Le Parti Communiste Français pendant l'entre-deux-guerres (Paris: Armand Colin, 1972), 146. (25) See Annie Kriegel, Les Communistes français (Paris: Seuil, 1968), 55–6. (26) See Vernon Lidtke, The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labour in Imperial Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 196. (27) See Philippe Robrieux, Maurice Thorez: Vie secrète et vie puhlique (Paris: Fayard, 1975), 88–117; and Jacques Girault, Benoît Frachon: Syndicaliste et communiste (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989), 11–12. (28) See Ch. 1. (29) For a recent illustration, see the article by the poet Dominique Grandmont in La Pensée, July–Aug. 1988. (30) See Racine and Bodin, Le Parti Communiste Français, 159–63. (31) See David Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals (London: André Deutsch, 1964), 30–1. (32) Laurent Casanova, ȘLe Parti Communiste Français et les intellectuels', in Le Parti Communiste, les intellectuels, et la nation (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1949), 10. (33) See ‘Résolution sur les problèmes idéologiques et culturels’, Cahiers du communisme, May–June 1966, p. 270. (34) See Les Intellectuels, la culture, et la révolution (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1980), 347–50. (35) Quoted in Laurent Casanova, ‘Responsabilités de l'intellectuel communiste’, Cahiers du communisme, Apr. 1949, p. 444. (36) In Les Intellectuels, la culture, et la révolution, 338 and 345. (37) See Manifeste du Parti Communiste: Pour une démocratie avançée, pour une France socialiste (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1969). Page 33 of 36

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation (38) Jacques Chambaz, ‘Les Communistes et les intellectuels’, Cahiers du communisme, June–July 1978. (39) François Hincker, Le Parti Communiste au carrefour (Paris: Albin Michel, 1981), 24. (40) Pierre Juquin, Autocritiques (Paris: Grasset, 1985), 25. (41) Ibid. 247. (42) Ibid. 244. (43) Hincker, Le Parti Communiste au carrefour, 217. (44) See Tony Judt, Marxism and the French Left (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 107–9. (45) See Daniel Ligou, Histoire du socialisme en France 1871–1961 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962); and Georges Lefranc, Les Gauches en France 1789–1972 (Paris: Payor, 1973). (46) See Jean Sagnes, ‘Parti Communiste et Parti socialiste: Genèse d'une terminologie’, Revue française de science politique, 32/4–5 (Aug.–Oct. 1982). (47) Hincker, Le Parti Communiste au carrefour, 23–4; emphasis added. (48) Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, trans. L. Wirth and E. Shils, (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1936), 139. (49) Ibid. 97–171. (50) Mannheim's conception of the intellectual was essentially an article of faith. Few social historians would claim that intellectuals in the Weimar Republic were detached from the class structure of German society. Furthermore, the prospects for the attainment of a scientific political perspective by the German intelligentsia were halted decisively by the Nazis' systematic (and successful) efforts to destroy all forms of independent thought in the country. For further discussions of the role of intellectuals in Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s, see Istvan Deak, Weimar Germany's Left-Wing Intellectuals: A Political History of the Weltbühne and its Circle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968); and Walter Laqueur, ‘The Role of the Intelligentsia in the Weimar Republic’, Social Research, 39 (1972). (51) Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals, 17–18; emphasis added. (52) See results of a national survey in Le Monde, 11 Aug. 1987.

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation (53) From an exit poll based on a national sample of 11,280 voters. The results were compiled in a monograph by Jean-Luc Parodi and Françoise Vibert, Le Déclin du PC (1970–1985): Analyses secondaries des données de l'IFOP (Paris, 1985); see p. 35 bis. (54) Hélène Parmelin, Libérez les communistes! (Paris: Stock-Opéra Mundi, 1979), 153. (55) Jeannine Verdès-Leroux, Au service du parti: Le PC, les intellectuels, et la culture 1944–1956 (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 15. (56) Such as the ‘Bolshevization’ period in the late 1920s and early 1930s; and the later phase of Stalinism between the late 1940s and the mid-1950s. (57) See Casanova, ‘Responsabilités de l'intellectuel communiste’, 444. (58) See Ch. 5. (59) Georges Lavau, A quoi sert le Parti Communiste Français? (Paris: Fayard, 1981), 36. (60) Ibid. 107; this comparison of these Communist intellectuals with the bâtisseursde cathédrales was first made in Jacqueline Mer, Le Parti de Maurice Thorez, 100. (61) Czesław Milosz, The Captive Mind (London: Secker and Warburg, 1953), 201. (62) Lavau, A quoi sert le Parti Communiste?, 108. (63) Ibid. 110. (64) Ibid. 111. (65) The recollections of former Communists, particularly those of the Cold War generation, should be treated with considerable caution. As Arthur Koestler warned: ‘As a rule, our memory romanticizes the past. But when one has renounced a creed … the opposite mechanism sets to work. In the light of that later knowledge, the original experience loses its innocence, becomes tainted and rancid in recollection … Those who were caught by the great illusion of our time and have lived through its moral and intellectual debauch, either give themselves up to a new addiction of the opposite type, or are condemned to pay with a lifelong hangover.’ See Arthur Koestler et al., The God that Failed: Six Studies in Communism (London: Hamilton, 1950), 63–4. (66) Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1957), 245.

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French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation (67) Hincker, Le Parti Communiste au carrefour, 11–12; emphasis added. (68) See Programme commun de gouvernement (Paris: Èditions Sociales, 1972). (69) It might also be added that this further confirmed a previously criticized disposition of the functionalist: the inherent tendency, ceteris paribus, to take for granted the adhesion of individuals and groups to a norm. (70) Kriegel, Les Communistes français, 120. (71) This message was reproduced in Révolution, 31 Dec. 1982–6 Jan. 1983. (72) This distinction will be developed further in Ch. 3. (73) See Verdès-Leroux, Au service du parti, 18–19. (74) First elected as a candidate member at the Le Havre party Congress in 1956, Garaudy became a full member 5 years later, at the PCF's 16th Congress on the Île-Saint-Denis. (75) It may be noted, in passing, that the result of this dispute, arbitrated by the party at a special session of the Central Committee at Argenteuil in Mar. 1966, was a rather uncharacteristic fudge. Garaudy was slapped on the hand for exaggerating the philosophical convergences between Marxism and Christianity, and Althusser was reprimanded for developing a conception of theoretical activity which was divorced from the practice of the class struggle. Ironically, both characters of this intra-party drama were to be marginalized by the end of the decade. Garaudy' heresies eventually led to his expulsion from the PCF in 1970, whilst Althusser's ardent sympathy for the Maoist Cultural Revolution considerably reduced his scope for influencing official party doctrine. See Robert Geerlandt, Garaudy et Althusser: Le Débat sur l'humanisme dans le Parti Communiste Français et son enjeu (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1978). (76) ‘Ce qui fait difficulté, c'est très précisément le moment où la République se trouve en présence d'organisations qui prétendent ôter à leurs adhérents une part plus ou moins considérable de leur liberté individuelle, de leur liberté d'appréciation. Un Républicain français peut en somme penser ce qu'il veut, pourvu qu'il pense par lui-même.’ In Claude Nicolet, L'Idée républicaine en France (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), 503; emphasis added.

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals Sudhir Hazareesingh

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the place of intellectuals in the organizational structure of the French Communist Party (PCF). Publicity of involvement in the collective life of the party was an important initial criterion for Communist intellectuals. The chapter characterizes the intellectuals in the inner and outer circles of the PCF. The inner circle intellectuals were those who held top-level positions while those in the outer circle belonged to the lower levels of the party structure. In addition to intellectuals who were full-time officials in the organization, there were some who only occupied consultative roles and offered their services to specific committees and organizations run by the party. Keywords:   intellectuals, French Communist Party, political party structure, communist intellectuals, communism

THIS chapter will be devoted to a closer examination of the place of intellectuals in the organizational structure of the PCF. As already suggested, Communist intellectuals were not an undifferentiated totality. The account which follows will provide a flavour of their political, ideological, and institutional diversity, from an essentially diachronic perspective. But this outline of the PCF's intellectual physiognomy will also serve a more specific purpose: to highlight the particular forms of intellectual activity which will be privileged in this narrative. From this methodological angle, publicity of action will serve as the guiding principle for evaluating the changing position of intellectuals in the PCF.

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals This depiction will be completed by a synchronic examination of a cluster of arguments which assessed the position of intellectuals in the party in the late 1970s. Despite stemming from divergent political perspectives, these arguments shared a common assumption about the irrelevance of intellectuals in the Communist counter-community. It will be suggested that this assumption was misplaced. By underestimating the essential role played by intellectuals in the emerging intra-party dispute, these analysts failed not only to provide an effective diagnosis of the events of the late 1970s, but also to capture a critical moment in the disintegration of the French Communist Party.

The Identification of Communist Intellectuals What principles should guide the wider definition of intellectual activity in the party? A tout seigneur tout honneur: the PCF's (p.106) basic approach to this question should be outlined first. Dating from the 1960s, the PCF's official nomenclature of the social and occupational horizons of its members included intellectuals as a specific category. Although, as will be argued subsequently,1 the quantitative estimates of the PCF always had to be treated with considerable caution, official Communist statistics could arguably be used as a reliable measure of relativities. In this context, the proportion of intellectuals in the party showed little variation in the 1960s and 1970s: in 1966 the party estimated that 9 per cent of its members were intellectuals;2 in 1979 (taking note of a slight widening of the party's definition of intellectual activity) the PCF claimed that one party member in every ten was a ‘travailleur intellectue’.3 The broad scope covered by this definition of intellectual activity will not be adopted in this narrative. Although it will be useful to bear in mind the PCF's estimate of the size of its intellectual membership, the imperatives of selectivity dictate the adoption of a much narrower focus of analysis. From this perspective, the first parameter to be used in the identification of Communist intellectuals during this period is self-definition. In other words, attention may be centred initially upon those who specified their distinct socio-professional identity as intellectuals. A good illustration of this approach was provided by Raymond Jean, Professor of French Literature at the University of Aix-en-Provence, and member of the PCF between 1968 and 1980: Il faut prendre la fonction des intellectuels pour ce qu'elle est. C'est nous qui écrivons, qui nous exprimons publiquement, parce que c'est notre métier que de nous exprimer publiquement. Nous saisissons, au Parti comme ailleurs, les courants qui se manifestent dans un groupe, dans une société, et nous les transformons en discours. Un intellectuel est celui qui parle pour ceux qui n'ont pas de voix, ou dont la voix est trop faible.4 After 1978, furthermore, Communist intellectuals signalled their distinctive existence by engaging in forms of public action which (p.107) went beyond the bounds of Page 2 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals traditional militant activity in the party: signature of petitions, public statements on current political situations and problems, and open discussions with the party leadership. Publicity of involvement in the collective life of the party, therefore, was an important initial criterion for identifying Communist intellectuals. The objective dimension of intellectual identity

However, it is important not to focus exclusively on those in the party who subjectively defined themselves as intellectuals. In the course of the debates within the PCF after 1978, many party members consciously refrained from identifying themselves as intellectuals for tactical reasons. They wished to convince the party leadership (and public opinion in general) that their views were not simply those of a small minority, but effectively represented the positions of a substantial proportion of the membership. Thus France Vernier, one of the intellectuals invited by the party leadership to discuss current problems at the Vitry meeting in December 1978, specified that the issues under examination were important to all Communists, and expressed the desire to see the traditional distinction between workers and intellectuals transcended.5 Despite her subjective perception of her social status, the author of these views could be described objectively as an intellectual, by virtue of her occupation: professeur de lettres at a university, and member of the editorial committee of the party journal for intellectuals, La Nouvelle Critique. Similarly, the later experiences of an intellectuel de parti such as Henri Fiszbin will be entirely pertinent to this investigation. This metalworker, who joined the party in 1946 and gradually climbed the different rungs of the party's permanent organization before becoming the First Secretary of the Paris Federation in 1973, exercised the functions of an intellectual, even though he considered himself a member of the working class.6 Fiszbin was a perfect illustration of a more general type of party functionary, the intellectuel d'origine ouvrière, who joined the party at a relatively young age, with little (p.108) formal education or professional qualifications, but then proceeded to acquire a considerable level of learning and culture after going through the network of écoles des cadres, the educational institutions maintained by the PCF at local, federal, and national levels.7 The Communist intellectuals' changing perception of their social identity should not be isolated from the wider historical problem of behavioural norms imposed on individuals in Leninist states and movements after the foundation of the international communist movement. Although this aspect will be the subject of further discussion, it is important, at this stage, to mention the existence of at least two fundamental types of normative constraint upon intellectual activity in Communist parties in general. The first was a restriction based on the organizational principles of the institution: the systematic control of all grassroots intellectual activities by the centre. A good example of such heavyhanded practices was the Stalinist authorities' definition of rigid cultural and aesthetic standards in the Soviet Union under the general banner of ‘socialist Page 3 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals realism’.8 The intellectual in a Communist organization, therefore, was constantly pulled away from his subjectivity, in the sense that he was always expected to subsume his individual identity into the greater collective entity to which he belonged. This normative limitation to diversity, and its internalization by Communist intellectuals in the PCF, was stressed by Gérard Belloin, who joined the party at the Liberation and served as a permanent for twenty-five years: ‘à trop vouloir nous couler dans un nous abstrait et doué de toutes les vertus, chacun de nous perd un peu de son identité, et cette résultante de nous tous qu'est le Parti s'en trouve faussée’.9 It should not be hard to imagine how a norm of this type could serve as an obstacle to the self-definition of party members as intellectuals, and this confirmed the requirement of a certain number of objective criteria for identifying intellectuals in the (p.109) PCF. This need was reinforced by a second restriction on intellectual activity in the Communist movement, based on a tradition (identified in the preceding chapter) which regarded the intellectual as a species inherently infected by bourgeois and reformist tendencies. The Stalinist postulate that the working class was the ultimate repository of truth was translated, in Communist organizations, into an affirmation of the inferiority of the intellectual with respect to the working class. This propensity to brand the intellectual as a potential heretic and deviant was illustrated by frequent references to social origins as a means of settling internal debates. Thus, the novelist Jorge Semprun, a member of the Spanish Communist Party until 1964, recounted the classic response of a working-class party member to one of his arguments at a cell meeting: ‘Tu n'es rien de plus qu'un intellectuel.’10 The echoes of this crude reductionism in the PCF could be heard in this sweeping statement by the philosopher Louis Althusser in 1968: ‘Comme tout intellectuel, le professeur de philo(sophie) est un petit-bourgeois. Quand il ouvre la bouche, c'est l'idéologie petite-bourgeoise qui parle … dans leur masse, [les intellectuels] restent indécrottablement petits-bourgeois par leur idéologic.’11 The defensiveness with which intellectuals often regarded their status in Communist movements, therefore, could partly be attributed to the existence (and survival) of a number of norms and values inherited from the Stalinist period. The arguments developed above will be elaborated subsequently. None the less, it has been important, from the point of view of defining the subject of this investigation, to give some indication of the specific causes of many party members'- reluctance to identify themselves as intellectuals. It will be argued that this abnegatory tendency in the PCF declined steadily in the 1960s and 1970s. Seen in this light, there was a clear sense in which the intra-party dispute itself represented an assertion of the intellectuals' specific social and political identity, even though, as will subsequently be noted, (p.110) the contestataires did not ultimately forsake the traditional Communist veneration for the working class.

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals Inner and outer circles

A further contour of the Communist intellectual's identity could be traced by locating his relationship to what Annie Kriegel defined as the ‘noyau dur et stable’ of the PCF: the permanent organization of the party, the appareil.12 This was the locus of power and authority in the PCF, and could provide a fixed point of reference for identifying different types of intellectual in the party. Thus, an initial analytical distinction could be made between those intellectuals who were internal and external to the appareil. The inner circle of PCF intellectuals could be defined as those who belonged to (or regularly collaborated with) the higher levels of the permanent organization of the party. In the Thorezian era they formed a clearly identifiable category, the principal raison d'être of which was to defend and promote the party line in all circumstances. Above all, they were distinguished by the particularly pugnacious style with which they presented their arguments, and the irreproachable orthodoxy of their positions with regard to the party leadership.13 As David Caute noted in his classic account of this period: ‘with the Stalinists it was not a question of coming down on one side or another of a delicately-balanced argument: they were a new breed, an army of scribes and literate sergeantmajors’.14 The sociologist Pierre Naville used the term ‘intellectuel de parti’ to describe this particular category of party activists,15 (p.111) and this expression will be retained to denote those in the PCF appareil who carried out the same functions, although it will become obvious that the manner in which these functions were exercised after 1978 differed radically from the practices of the Thorezian period. Structural and geographical variables

A more complex picture of this inner circle could be drawn by taking structural and geographical parameters into account. With reference to the former, it is important to note that the appareil of the PCF was segmented vertically. At the highest level were permanent functionaries who occupied positions of authority at national level (e.g. cadres attached to the numerous sections de travail organized by the party Secretariat). The lower reaches of the party organization comprised officials with responsibilities at local level (e.g. cadres in Communistcontrolled municipalities, and office-bearers in primary party organizations—the secrétaire de cellule or secrétaire de section16). With regard to geography, it should be noted that concepts of centre and periphery were just as relevant to the study of a political organization such as the PCF as they were to larger units at national and international level. For example, two intellectuels de parti performing similar functions in the permanent machinery of the party in different localities could have rather diverse experiences of party life, and totally separate forms of access to information concerning local and national issues involving the PCF.17 From a formal point of view, whoever was responsible for intellectual activities in the Page 5 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals Fédération de Paris may have performed the same functions as his colleague in the Fédération des Pyrenées-Atlantiques, but from almost every other point of view—the sociological profile of the departments, the physical distance from the epicentre of national (p.112) political life, and the relative influence of the PCF in the respective areas—their experiences could be entirely distinct. Whilst it is clearly beyond the limited scope of this investigation to take into account all such structural and regional variables, and certainly not part of this study to posit the existence of a necessary connection between regional differentiation and the political consciousness of the intellectuels de parti, it remains the case that these differences could have had an important effet structurant on the perceptions of intellectuals. None the less, it is not implausible to suggest, as an initial working hypothesis, that structural variables were relatively more important than geographical ones. An examination of the careers of leading intellectuels de parti in the Thorezian era18 would probably show a strong connection between the occupation of influential positions in the party apparatus and a disposition towards political orthodoxy. To give an example: a study of the role of a Communist normalien such as Georges Cogniot in the party machine would depend primarily on an analysis of the positions he occupied: member of the Central Committee, senator, editor of the review La Pensée, and the first President of the party research institute, the Institut Maurice Thorez. His modest social origins in the Franche-Comté were of little relevance in assessing his public personality in the party, and often served only as a basis for arbitrary and unverifiable psychological and psycho-analytical inferences.19 This inner circle of intellectuels de parti should not be seen, therefore, as a homogenous category. A central core of intellectuals who were permanents may first be identified. These officials were employed in diverse capacities on a fulltime basis by the permanent organization of the party. As argued above, the path followed by most of them in the Thorezian era was linear, and could be characterized as one of uncritical devotion to the institution they served. An illustration of this ideal type was André Wurmser, who became actively involved in the permanent (p.113) organization of the PCF in 1934. He began his career as one of the secretaries of the Comité de Vigilance des Intellectuels AntiFascistes, a broadly based association devoted to promoting left-wing unity in France.20 He then joined Vendredi, a daily newspaper which acted as the official organ of the Popular Front until the latter's collapse in 1938. After the Liberation Wurmser contributed numerous articles to various party publications, such as Les Lettres françaises, and after 1954 he became an editorialist in the official party newspaper L'Humanité. It would be entirely justified to apply his description of his activities in the party during the Stalinist era to his entire career: ‘[J'avais une] avidité de servir, n'importe comment et n'importe quoi.

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals J'assumais, je recherchais même plus de tâches que je n'en pouvais accomplir, et je les menais à bien … tant bien que mal.’21 The absolute fidelity of the permanents to the party, which Wurmser typified throughout his career, was far less in evidence after 1978, as will be seen later. A rather different trajectory, from this point of view, was followed by Antoine Spire, a graduate of the Ecole des Hautes Études Commerciales, who joined the PCF in 1968 and almost immediately became a permanent functionary. He was initially assigned to the Interagra company, a firm directed by the milliardaire rouge Jean-Baptiste Doumeng. A year later he moved to the Éditions Sociales, the official publishing agency run by the PCF. He served there as a member of the editorial board for several years, before being moved to the public relations department, a post he held until his resignation in October 1978. Spire's verdict on the charmed circle of permanent party functionaries presented an interesting contrast to Wurmser's view:‘Un très grand nombre de cadres permanents communistes ont l'habitude de vivre entre eux. Ils sont rarement en contact, pour certains du moins, avec la masse des hommes ordinaires … une certaine forme de vie militante est une dangereuse tour d'ivoire.’22 It will also be useful, from this angle, to provide an indication of the geographical limits of this enquiry. Does the study of the political affiliations of the intellectuals lend itself to a ‘horizontal’ (p.114) focus, essentially centred upon local forms of interaction? The merit of adopting such an approach would reside primarily in an examination of the regional dimensions of French Communism, with the ultimate aim of uncovering the significance of local subcultures and traditions in the political practice of the PCF. But, although these variations in local temperaments would undoubtedly constitute a worthy object of investigation, their contribution to resolving the problematic of this book would be minimal, for reasons connected both with the organizational structure of the party and the nature of intellectual life in France. Indeed, the Communist intellectual, irrespective of his ‘regional’ identity, was a member of an institution which operated on clear principles of centralization. From this angle, events which occurred at the periphery of the organization tended to be given public prominence only to the extent that they impinged upon the PCF's main structures in Paris. This proposition may be illustrated by the social geography of the intra-party dispute after March 1978. For example, a petition signed by members of the Jacques Duclos party cell in Aix-en-Provence became a contentious issue only after gathering more than 1,500 signatures following its wider circulation in the counter-community after April 1978. From the point of view of the party authorities, quite naturally, the rebellion of the critical intellectuals assumed greater significance at national level. In this sense, the closer the critics were to the centre, the more likely they were to be noticed by the party authorities. Conversely, the physical location of the principal target of the critical Page 7 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals intellectuals further determined the structure of the debate. Since the apex of the party structure was situated in Paris, the intellectuals increasingly pitched their arguments directly at the Place du Colonel Fabien, without following the vertical channels of communication inside the party after March 1978. The direct consequence of denying the intellectuals access to ‘internal’ means of communication was, therefore, the aggravation of the national character of the public dispute. This localization of the intra-party dispute was also reinforced by the inherently Parisian focus of intellectual activity in France, which was noted in Chapter 1. From the point of view of the subject of this investigation, the capital was not only the seat of the party's administrative structure, but also the centre of the (p.115) PCF's network of ‘cultural’ institutions: the Communist press and publishing agencies, research institutes and commissions de travail, and front organizations specifically directed towards intellectuals, such as the Fédération des Médecins de France. At a more general level, furthermore, the high concentration of cultural institutions in Paris has been stressed. These structures of sociability offered the party intellectual a complementary (or even alternative) focus of identification, and provided an essential resource for the critic who sought to express his opposition to the party leadership outside the conventional channels of communication of the counter-community. Newspapers such as Le Monde, Le Matin, and Libération; journals such as Le Nouvel Observateur and L'Express; and publishing agencies such as Maspéro and Seuil thus offered a welcome terrain for the extension of the intra-party debate into the structures of sociability of the French intellectual community. In so doing, these institutions further contributed to the essentially Parisian flavour of the crisis. Consultative roles

A rather different type of intellectuel de parti consisted of those intellectuals who were not full-time officials in the apparatus, but, none the less, regularly offered their services to specific committees and organizations run by the party. This type of collaboration was normally predicated upon the competence of the intellectual in a given field, and was, in theory, a way of generating collective discussion so as to maximize the intellectual resources of the party.23 Given the vast network of such party committees at national level, the scope for this type of activity was quite broad, and its range fairly diverse. One common form of collaboration consisted of the regular participation of intellectuals in the work of special commissions, known as the sections de travail of the Central Committee. The object of these commissions, normally chaired by a member of the Bureau Politique or Secrétariat, was (p.116) to carry out more elaborate research on the policy directives of the decision-making bodies of the party.24 The sections de travail which had a specific bearing on the intellectual activities of the party were those which, in general, attracted the collaboration of the greatest number of intellectuals: ‘Intellectuels-Culture-Enseignement’, headed in the late 1970's Page 8 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals by Guy Hermier; ‘Économie’, chaired by leading party specialist in economic affairs, Philippe Herzog; and the commission responsible for research activities and theoretical work, directed by Francette Lazard.25 Intellectuals were also given an opportunity to play a consultative role in organizations controlled by the party. The Éditions Sociales, the party publishing agency, thus set up an advisory committee of about thirty party intellectuals, whose role was to assist the firm in reviewing texts submitted for publication.26 This general objective was quite distinct from the specific controlling purpose of the commission de lecture, which could be set up to screen material considered to be politically sensitive by the party leadership. Thus, some of the views expressed in Jean Ellenstein's Histoire de I'URSS, published by the Éditions Sociales in 1972, provoked a controversy within the upper reaches of the party. The following volumes, accordingly, were inspected by a specially appointed commission de lecture, consisting of party intellectuals and members of the appareil, to ensure that no more feathers would be ruffled.27 This form of collaboration was also commonly encountered in the party press and research institutes. The sociologist Michel Simon, the author (with Guy Michelat) of a study on the impact of perceptions of religion and class on political behaviour in France,28 was also a member of the editorial advisory (p.117) board of the Cahiers du communisme, the monthly review published by the Central Committee. As will subsequently be noted, similar roles would be played by historians in the commissions de recherche of the Institut Maurice Thorez, and by social scientists and philosophers in research committees at the Centre d'Études et de Recherches Marxistes. The outer circle of intellectuals

The outer circle of PCF intellectuals could be defined as those who either belonged to the lower levels of the party structure or only occasionally collaborated with the network of party institutions. One very distinctive category of such intellectuals consisted of prestigious public figures whose excellence in their respective fields was used by the party to justify its claim to be the ‘parti de l'intelligence’. Despite their renown, these intellectuals should be considered as part of the outer circle of the movement, as their involvement in the countercommunity tended to be symbolic rather than substantive. In most cases, the active participation of such figures of the haute société intellectuelle in party life tended to be limited to well-publicized expressions of devotion to the PCF. The most caricatural example of this disposition was provided, in the later years of his life, by the poet Louis Aragon, who stated at the official celebration of his fortieth year as a party member: ‘Je ne suis pris ici que comme un symbole. Un symbole pour lequel je suis heureux d'être pris: celui de la fidélité au Parti. Utilisez-moi comme tel. Je ne puis qu'en être heureux.’29 For most of his long membership of the party Aragon moved within the inner circle of PCF intellectuals, exercising an influential role in the formation of cultural policy, and Page 9 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals holding important editorial positions in the party press.30 After the closure by the PCF, in 1972, of Les Lettres françaises, the journal he had edited since the Liberation, Aragon retreated from active involvement in party life. Although reelected to the Central committee in 1976, 1979, and 1982, he (p.118) was content to throw the full weight of his prestige behind the domestic and international policies of the leadership. His name appeared in the appel published by L'Humanité in January 1980 to protest against the widespread condemnation of the PCF's ringing endorsement of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.31 Aragon never wavered in his public expression of support for the PCF until his death in December 1982, although his mature assessment of his political and intellectual career was tinged with a sense of disenchantment which could, at times, even turn into bitterness.32 However, these grand figures of French public life constituted only a very small proportion of the outer circle of party intellectuals, even though they were its most visible element. A second category, much less exposed to the public eye, consisted of those intellectuals who occupied positions of responsibility at the lower echelons of the party structure, and also of those who periodically extended their collaboration to the network of party institutions. A good example of the latter case would be the occasional contacts between some PCF intellectuals and the party press at local and national levels. After 1978, the historian Jean Bruhat's collaboration with the latter was limited to a few articles written for L'Humanité in 1981, and a contribution to the Histoire de la France contemporaine, an ‘official’ interpretation of French history sponsored by the party and published by the Éditions Sociales.33 Also part of the outer circle of party intellectuals were those cadres who exercised responsibilities at the lower or intermediate levels of the party organization: the responsable à la littérature in cells and sections, to whom was devolved the—often arduous— (p.119) task of propagating party publications (books, reviews, brochures, and leaflets) in his locality;34 or the responsable for intellectuals in each of the Federal Committees, whose function was to coordinate intellectual activity within the Federation, and assist in the implementation of national party policy towards intellectuals in the area. Finally, mention should be made of those intellectuals who did not in any way exercise responsibilities in the party structure, and whose participation in the collective life of the party was limited to periodical attendance of cell meetings.35 Whilst the existence of this particular category of ‘armchair’ intellectuals should be noted, their views on the crisis in the party between 1978 and 1982 were only of importance, from the point of view of this investigation, to the extent that they were publicly expressed and articulated, either through concerted activity in their cell or through the signature of letters and petitions addressed to the party leadership.

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals At the fringe: The compagnons de route

Besides this inner and outer circle, described in the above sections, the existence of a more nebulous category of intellectuals should be noted. These were not members of the party, but often found themselves on the same political and ideological wavelength as the PCF with regard to specific policies or campaigns. These intellectual sympathizers were regularly found at the fringes of Communist movements,36 and their existence in France was often used by the PCF to demonstrate the extensive nature of the party's appeal to groups lying outside the traditional perimeter of party members and activists. Since 1920, and especially during the decades which immediately preceded and followed the Liberation, the PCF could pride itself on its ability to capture and mobilize the support of a broad and diffuse category of such sympathizers, who were (p.120) given the generic title of compagnons de route.37 A classic itinerary, in this respect, was that followed by Emmanuel d'Astier dela Vigerie, a progressiste intellectual and Gaullist grand résistant, who moved towards the PCF after the Liberation, expressing his unflinching solidarity with the foreign-policy positions defended by the party in his daily paper Libération. He was awarded the Lenin peace prize in 1958 for his constant identification with the principles of Soviet foreign policy, and remained in the mouvance of the PCF until the mid-1960s, when he began to drift back towards Gaullism.38 By the late 1970s the PCF's ability to attract this type of support within the French intellectual community had been considerably eroded by a number of domestic and external factors, some of which have already been touched upon in the Introduction. None the less, instances of fellow-travelling activities and attitudes could still be located. A typical illustration would be the approach of the Vauclusian poet Jean Tortel (born in 1904), who extended his support to the PCF over a broad range of domestic and international issues for more than fifty years. How ever, he always considered himself too much of a libertarian constrain his independence by taking up membership of a political institution such as the PCF: ‘Les appareils? lls sont là pour déterminer, pour dire la ou les lois. Nous sommes là pour vivre…’.39 As indicated in the Introduction, an important means of tracing the extent of support and sympathy for the PCF within the French intellectual community was through close scrutiny of the signatories to the numerous appels au vote published by the party press before each national election. These appels were (p.121) traditionally signed not only by intellectuals who were current members of the party, but also by as wide a range as possible of public personalities from the haute société intellectuelle. Thus the appel published in L'Humanité before the European elections of 1979 was signed by well-known intellectuels de parti such as Louis Aragon and Jean Ellenstein, but also included the names of a number of compagnons de route: the actress Marina Vlady, and the singers (and regular performers at the annual fête de L'Humanité in September) Isabelle Aubret and Juliette Gréco.40 It was not uncommon to find that many of these sympathizers were once active members of Page 11 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals the party. The philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre, who was expelled from the PCF in June 1958 for ideological deviationism,41 publicly returned to the fold twenty years later by signing an individual appel42 to vote for the PCF in the legislative elections of March 1978. He justified his position on the grounds of his strong hostility to the reformist policies of the French Socialist Party, and his opposition to the ‘imperialist’ strategy pursued by the Carter administration. The PCF's ability to attract the support of fellow-travellers declined dramatically in the 1980s, and this was an important indication of the collapse in the party's general appeal to the French intellectual community. By 1984, Communist compagnons de route had clearly become an endangered species. At the annual convention of the Mouvement de la Paix, for example, the number of nonCommunist public figures was reduced to a handful of stalwarts.43 In this respect, the most revealing indicator of the dramatic situation faced by the PCF was provided by the simple argument given by actor Richard Bohringer to justify his support for the Communists in the 1984 European elections: ‘La gauche sans les communistes, c'est quelque chose que je ne peux pas concevoir.’44 In the glorious days of the PCF's hegemony over the Left, fellow-travellers supported the party as a means of empathizing with great political causes such as peace and disarmament. By 1984, the small rump of compagnons de route (p.122) stood by the organization simply to exorcise the threat of its impending disappearance. This brief outline of some of the characteristic features of Communist intellectuals since the Liberation suggests that the counter-community could accommodate a considerable element of political, ideological, and institutional diversity. For methodological reasons, this variety will not be entirely captured in the subsequent narrative, as particular emphasis will be placed on those intellectuals who publicized their political interventions in the countercommunity after 1978. For this reason, most of the intellectuals whose political activities will be surveyed in subsequent chapters were based in Paris. But enough has been said to reinforce the proposition that Communist intellectuals could not, at any moment in the history of the party, be reduced to a specific ‘essence’. The pitfalls of such ontological conceptions of intellectuals in the PCF will be fully shown in the following pages, as the arguments presented by a number of analysts of French Communism in the late 1970s are evaluated. Their perspectives on the conflict differ quite significantly in many respects. But common to each approach is the assumption that the political identity of Communist intellectuals (and party members more generally) can be reduced to a few schematic ideological characteristics.

The Denial of Intellectual Subjectivity As the intra-party dispute gathered momentum after March 1978, many observers sought to minimize the extent to which the crisis represented a Page 12 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals menace to the political and ideological cohesion of the PCF. In denying that the party was threatened by the activities of the rebels, these observers were naturally led to assess the place of intellectuals in the Communist countercommunity. What emerged from this analysis was a relative consensus: the intellectuals who had questioned the PCF's political strategy were isolated from the party mainstream. Underlying these various approaches, it will be suggested, was a reductionist conception of the political identity of Communist intellectuals. This misguided anthropology ultimately explained the fact that most observers of (p.123) the intra-party dispute failed to grasp the long-term implications of the events of the late 1970s for the stability of the PCF. There were three separate proponents of the contention that the intellectuals who were involved in critical activity after March 1978 were a group of isolated individuals, who in no way represented the views of the greater mass of party members. The first, as might reasonably be expected, was the PCF leadership, whose initial assessment of the scope of dissident activity was articulated as the intra-party dispute unfolded. The views expressed by the party leaders were as categorical as they were inconsistent. Indeed, party General Secretary Georges Marchais pointed out, in early May 1978, that the claims made by the critics of the party leadership should not be taken seriously: what the presse bourgeoise was intent on describing as a serious internal crisis was nothing more than a ‘petite discussion marginale sans intérêt pour le parti’.45 If this was the case, who, it might be asked, were the individuals actually involved in this marginal debate? Marchais provided a typically imperious response: a small band of armchair philosophers, alienated from the counter-community and from society in general, and thus inherently predisposed to indulge in vapid intellectual fantasies: ‘Il est vrai que c'est plus façile de monologuer, assis derrière un bureau, et rédiger en dehors de la vie, et à l'abri de toute contestation de la part de ses camarades, des articles péremptoires qui trouveront façilement preneur.’46 At the same time, the party leadership made every effort to convince its mass membership that these isolated dissidents were also firmly linked to a ‘stratégie générale de la grande bourgeoisie soucieuse d'empêcher le changement et concentrant ses coups contre le Parti Communiste’.47 These unacceptable practices were linked to an external campaign which sought to undermine the party: ‘Cette campagne se prolonge aujourd'hui dans les attaques dirigées contre le P.C.F. lui-même, attaques auxquelles l'activité fractionelle d'un petit groupe de membres du Parti fournit désormais des arguments.’48 (p.124) These official arguments were somewhat inconsistent. How could a debate which was apparently of no interest to the party possibly have constituted an attack against the fundamental interests of the organization? If the party was being undermined by these discussions, they must have been of some significance. If, however, these debates were unimportant, then they could not, by definition, have threatened the stability of the organization. Even by the

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals elevated standards of official party sophistry, it seemed that these two views could not quite be reconciled. Furthermore, the sharp reaction of the party leadership in branding its critics with the infamous mark of factionalism seemed to be entirely out of proportion with its assessment of the significance of the intellectuals' activities. If the individuals involved in oppositional practices were a small sect of marginalized intellectuals, why should the PCF have troubled itself with a dramatic public denunciation of their activities? If these individuals were internally isolated, they could not have been in a position to contaminate the rest of the organization with their dangerous ideas. The fact that the party leadership took such considerable pains to savage their views would imply that these critics were more numerous and, hence, more threatening to the party as a whole than official PCF pronouncements seemed to indicate. Finally, if, as Marchais claimed, these critics were cut off not only from the counter-community but also from social life in general, how could their views have been linked to an external campaign allegedly orchestrated to undermine the cohesion of the party? The intellectual could only be regarded as isolated from the rest of society if his interactions with the greater social and political community were negligible. If, on the other hand, these critical intellectuals were part of an external conspiracy against the PCF, it logically followed that they were not isolated, but fully integrated into particular networks of sociability outside the counter-community. It must be concluded that the official depiction of the critical intellectuals as alienated individuals was rather unconvincing, and seemed to suggest that the PCF leadership was engaged in the ritualistic exercise of denigrating its opponents rather than attempting to inform its membership, and the general public, of the actual balance of forces inside the party at the time. (p.125) Froth on the surface?

The second source of the proposition that the intellectuals actively involved in the intra-party dispute after March 1978 simply constituted a disparate and insignificant assortment of individuals was David Bell, in an analysis49 of the internal evolution of the PCF published in 1983. In his view, the party leadership had constantly adopted a domineering attitude towards the Communist intellectuals, although ‘there has been a persistent tendency for intellectuals to escape control’. Bell then defined the subjects of his analysis in the following uncharitable terms: ‘the communist intellectuals were … composed of academic lap-dogs’.50 Describing the emergence of oppositional activity in the party in the wake of the electoral defeat of the Union de la Gauche, he stressed that although ‘discontent seemed to be strong inside the Party’, criticism of the PCF's behaviour was primarily articulated by ‘such isolated intellectuals as Ellenstein and Althusser’.51 The activity of these intellectual dissidents was nothing more than ‘froth on the surface’.52 A reconstruction of Bell's view of the role played by Page 14 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals intellectuals in the intra-party dispute after March 1978, therefore, would go as follows: opposition to the line adopted by the party leadership was rampant, although its public expression was essentially limited to a few individuals. Furthermore, the vast majority of intellectuals were nothing more than pliant academics, who were entirely submissive to the commands of the party leadership. It may be noted that Bell did not specify the real source of the discontent in the PCF. Since he argued that this dissatisfaction existed, but rejected the contention that intellectuals were its prime movers, it has to be assumed that the state of disaffection was fairly widespread among other important sections of the party mass membership, especially the working class. But no evidence was produced to support this contention. The reader was left with (p.126) a denial of the proposition that the dissident activity of Ellenstein and Althusser was a symptom of a wider sense of disarray among party intellectuals as a whole, and a suggestion that other sections of the party were troubled by the PCF's attitude, although Bell did not point to a single occurrence in the internal life of the party after March 1978 which might confirm this postulate. It seems hard to give credence to a view which rejected a particular proposition despite the evidence available, and proposed a counterargument which was not substantiated by a single reference to the facts. Furthermore, Bell's perspective on the role of intellectuals in the PCF was rather incoherent. On the one hand, he made the general claim that Communist intellectuals showed a recurrent disposition towards evading attempts by the party leadership to dominate their activities, and, on the other, he described the same individuals as poodles who were quite content to submit to the edicts of higher authority. However, if the intellectuals constantly sought to ward off efforts to restrict their role in the party, this surely implied that they were anything but docile. Furthermore, if they were simply lap-dogs, it is hard to see how they could manifest any tendency to rebel against the directives of the party leadership. The wider problem: The assumption of internal uniformity

Ultimately, these ambiguities in Bell's position illustrated the characteristic disposition of most political analysts of the PCF to over-emphasize the cohesiveness and uniformity of the mass membership of the party in the latter half of the 1970s. This basic tendency was produced by the conjunction of at least three factors: the official rhetoric of the party itself; the central paradigm which informed most of the empirical studies of the organization; and the delayed manifestation of the process of decline of the PCF. Quite naturally, the party's official discourse always stressed the unity and vitality of the mass membership of the party, allegedly reflected in the dependable attitude of the committed militant, a selfless individual whose devotion to la cause du parti was total. Thus, a brochure edited by the PCF in 1940 typically defined the qualities of the ordinary party member as follows: Page 15 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals ‘personal courage, political constancy, unshakable [sic] confidence in the (p. 127) Party and its leaders, personal initiative, enthusiasm for … work, and resourcefulness in solving problems’.53 Although generally assailed when formulated in the typically hyperbolic language used in official party discourse, this image of the mass membership of the PCF was readily accepted as an accurate reflection of the attitude of the average party member. This conception became an idée reçue when buttressed by the influential paradigm established in Annie Kriegel's ‘ethnographical’ study of French Communism.54 The underlying thrust of her argument, from this perspective, was that the apparent diversity within the party counter-community was transformed into cohesion by virtue of the sheer organizational power of the institution: ‘Mais surtout, et c'est une observation essentielle, l'hétérogénéite relative initiale de la communauté partisane concourt à l'équilibre global de l'ensemble dans la mesure où elle est de façon constante combattue, réduite, vaincue et transformée en unité conquise par le corps consacré de l'appareil permanent’.55 Kriegel's synthesis was based primarily on a study of the peuple communiste carried out between 1965 and 1968, and, more broadly, on her personal experiences as a party intellectual during the Stalinist era.56 Her categories were based on secure empirical foundations, and her conclusions regarding the relative political homogeneity of the mass membership of the party constituted a hypothesis which could readily withstand the test of accumulated evidence on the subject. This central paradigm, however, continued to inform the perspective of most political analysts of the PCF for almost two decades, to such an extent that the political homogeneity of the mass membership of the party was generally taken for granted, without the support of a corpus of empirical evidence analogous to that accumulated by Kriegel in the 1960s. This absence of serious empirical work was arguably caused by the perception of a profound entrenchment of the organization in society. The PCF, in the eyes of most political analysts, appeared as a quasiindestructible (p.128) feature of the French political landscape, with an extremely stable share of the popular vote, which normally hovered around the 20 per cent mark; a mass membership far greater than any other political group in the country; a considerable hold on the working class, due to its effective control of the largest trade union in France; and, finally, a vast network of intermediate associations at national and local levels. Then, de subito, as the PCF began to undergo a precipitous process of disintegration after 1981, the same political analysts were as unanimous in proclaiming the irreversibility of the party's decline as they had been formerly in trumpeting its immutability on the French political horizon. The bemused observer of French Communism, who might express some perplexity at this smooth transition from one form of scholarly consensus to another, could be forgiven for wondering exactly what had happened to the Page 16 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals vaunted unity and cohesion of the PCF's mass membership during this process. How could a party whose members were allegedly so fundamentally attached to the practices, ideals, and values of French Communism collapse so dramatically in the space of less than six years? It can only be inferred that political analysts blithely assumed that the organization and its membership were in pristine condition long after such an observation ceased to be warranted. The belief in the essential political homogeneity of the mass membership of the party only began to be questioned when it became patently obvious that the star of French Communism was sinking rapidly in the firmament. The initial phase of this process was completely ignored by many political analysts, who continued to base their approach on a paradigm which was clearly becoming outdated. David Bell, writing in 1983, confidently concluded his arguments by totally dismissing the contention that the future of the PCF was ‘bleak’: the party's ‘non-electoral resources’ were still considerable, and the most important of these was the mass membership, which was ‘much better organized and more highly disciplined’57 than that of any other party on the Left. This uncritical adoption of the Kriegel paradigm was the fundamental source of the flaws in Bell's perspective. His account of the internal evolution of the PCF after 1978 significantly overestimated the extent of the unity and cohesion (p.129) of the mass membership, and this naturally led him to suggest that the intellectuals involved in the intra-party dispute were nothing more than a disparate assortment of individuals. The kriegel paradigm tested

A final set of propositions which made similar claims regarding the status and role of intellectuals in the counter-community during this period deserves attention. In the light of the above remarks, it would be appropriate to examine Annie Kriegel's own account of the intra-party dispute. This would provide an interesting opportunity to assess the extent to which this distinguished scholar's approach to these events cohered with her own paradigmatic conceptions of the previous decade. After September 1977, Annie Kriegel carefully observed the protracted process of disintegration of the alliance between Socialists and Communists, and thereafter kept a close eye on the internal ramifications of the electoral defeat within the two parties. Her immediate reactions to these events were set out in her regular chronicles in Le Figaro, and these articles were subsequently published as Le Communisme au jour le jour58 in 1979. Kriegel's general approach to her former party could best be described as robust. Her position with regard to the PCF was made abundantly clear in the epigram which adorned the first page of this collection: ‘On n'a pas le droit de se réjouir de la chute d'un ennemi; mais on n'est pas obligé de le ramasser.’59 It should be pointed out, however, that the fall in question referred to the Programme commun rather than its respective signatories. The entire thrust of her argument was devoted to a demonstration of the fundamental and almost irreconcilable Page 17 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals differences between Socialists and Communists, with the underlying suggestion that these two components of the Left could prosper only if they retained totally separate identities. From this general perspective, Kriegel proceeded to analyse the development of the internal crisis within the PCF after the elections of March 1978. The following (p.130) paragraphs will examine whether her conclusions were directly informed by her own general paradigm concerning the behaviour of the mass membership. The following remark, which appeared in an article published on 5 June 1978, should first be noted: ‘La contestation communiste interne, qui a pris un tour public au lendemain de l'échec électoral de la gauche, demeure étroitement circonsented.’60 This confinement of dissenting attitudes was reflected both in the sociological and organizational dimensions of the protest movement. From the former angle, Kriegel argued that the vocal critics of the party leadership were drawn from a narrow social circle of Communist intellectuals, mainly those linked to the ‘échelons moyens de l'Université et de ses dépendances’.61 The working-class base of the party, accordingly, appeared to be relatively indifferent to the wave of internal opposition. From the latter perspective, it was claimed that the critics were also marginalized within the organization: ‘Pratiquement aucun [contestataire] n'est venu de l'appareil politique, permanent ou non …’.62 The insignificance of the intellectuals' protest was reinforced, according to Kriegel, by the heterogeneity of the views expressed by the critics: the fact that Jean Ellenstein and Louis Althusser had agreed to append their names to a public petition against the party leadership was not, in itself, a reflection of any agreement on fundamental principles on their part. All this served to underscore the validity of the traditional Kriegel paradigm: this intra-party dispute would provide the PCF with a golden opportunity to identify and select its ‘éléments combatifs, ardents et convaincus’, and this could only produce one final outcome: ‘le resserrement des rangs communistes’.63 On 14 March 1979 Kriegel celebrated the first anniversary of the electoral defeat of the Left by publishing a commemorative article in Le Figaro, in which she stood by the conclusions she had reached ten months earlier. Despite some initial intimations to the contrary, the revolt of party intellectuals had failed to strike a receptive chord with the parti profond, and it followed, from her perspective, that the significance of the intra-party dispute (p.131) had been wildly overestimated: ‘loin d'être comme l'iceberg aux neuf dixièmes immergé, la fronde d'un groupe d'intellectuels ne cachait rien d'autre qu'elle même’.64 The essential homogeneity of the PCF, once again, had served to crush the particularism of individual dissidents, and the party could look forward to a characteristic celebration of its unity and cohesiveness at its twenty-third Congress in a few months: ‘[Tout ceci] permet d'augurer un congrès communiste tout entier mobilisé par les tâches qui s'offrent à lui et qui correspondent bien à son identité profonde: un parti organiquement lié au mouvement communiste

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals mondial d'obédience soviétique, un parti organiquement lié au mouvement ouvrier français.’65 Kriegel's conclusions, thus, were entirely consistent with her paradigmatic conception of the attitudes of the mass membership of the party. The intra-party crisis had demonstrated the ability of the party organization to transform the potential diversity of the peuple communiste into political homogeneity. Oppositional activity after March 1978 had been restricted to a small number of intellectuals, and the foundations of the institution had withstood the minor tremor caused by these few disgruntled activists. Despite its advancing age, the PCF could look forward to more than a few years of health, happiness, and prosperity. Kriegel's account failed to provide an adequate explanation of the internal dynamics of the intra-party dispute, and considerably over-emphasized the fundamental unity and cohesiveness of the party mass membership. As with David Bell's argument, it seems improbable that the PCF was an inherently homogenous organization throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and then suddenly, within the space of five years, found its status reduced to a marginalized and decaying political community, whose long-term hopes of political survival appeared to be quasi-non-existent. The functional traditions, affective symbols, and foundational values which helped to keep a political community of this type together could not suddenly have imploded within such a short time. A far greater level of fluidity should be allowed for the development of this process, enabling the political analyst first to locate manifestations of substantial centrifugal activity within the political (p.132) community, then identify the emergence of patent fissures within the latter, and only thereafter examine the terminal stages of the process, marked by the effective disintegration of the political institution. Most political analysts of French Communism, however, insisted on the vitality and internal cohesion of the PCF throughout the 1970s, and then swiftly moved to consign the organization to the dustbins of history a few years later. These two positions were rather inconsistent: if the PCF was indeed engaged in a desperate struggle for survival during the 1980s, the origins of its predicament could not be explained by reference to short-term political and conjunctural factors alone. It will be argued that the intra-party dispute of 1978–80 provided a critical impulsion to this process of degeneration. Thus, it is hard to resist comparing the political analysts who insisted on the internal cohesion of the party counter-community in the late 1970s to the astronomer who took a celestial light in a distant galaxy as sufficient proof of the existence of a living star: unfortunately, he had succeeded only in identifying the final glow of a longdeceased planet.

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals Notes:

(1) In Ch. 4. (2) See Georges Marchais, ‘Rapport au 18ème Congrès du PCF’, Cahiers du communisme, Feb.–Mar. 1967, pp. 263–82. (3) See Georges Marchais, ‘Rapport au 23èrne Congrès du PCF’, Cahiers du communisme, June–July 1979, p. 70. (4) Quoted from an interview given to Le Nouvel Observateur, 10 Apr. 1978; emphasis added. (5) France Vernier, in Gérard Molina and Yves Vargas (eds.), Ouverture d'une discussion? (Paris: Maspéro, 1979), 61. (6) See Henri Fiszbin (in collaboration with M. Goldring and J-J. Rosat), Les Bouches s'ouvrent: Une crise dans le Parti Communiste (Paris: Grasset, 1980), 44. (7) On the intellectual formation of the French party cadres, see Annie Kriegel, Les Communistes français (Paris: Seuil, 1968), 178–88; Georges Lavau: A quoi sert le Parti Communiste français? (Paris: Fayard, 1981), 119; and André Harris and Alain de Sédouy: Voyage à Vintérieur du Parti Communiste (Paris: Seuil, 1974), 22. (8) See Ch. 2. (9) Gérard Belloin, Nos rêves camarades: Infi(r)me(s) mémoires (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 12. (10) Jorge Semprun, Autobiographie de Federico Sanchez (Paris: Seuil, 1977), 17; emphasis added. For further discussion of his experiences of problems posed by the social origins of intellectuals in Stalinist organizations, see Quel beau dimanche! (Paris: Grasset, 1980), 47–9, 185–6. (11) From an interview given to the Italian Communist Party daily L'Unita, (1 Feb. 1968); translated and reprinted as ‘La Philosophic comme arme de la Révolution’, in Louis Althusser, Positions (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1976), 37. (12) Kriegel, Les Communistes français, 137. The encadrement of the PCF consisted, in broad terms, of (i) party members holding elected offices (mayor, general and municipal councillor, member of Parliament, and senator); (ii) cadres in positions of responsibility in the party (secretary of section, member of Federal and Central Committees, and of the Bureau Politique), and (iii) permanent officials in party or party-controlled organizations. It is difficult to estimate the exact size of the encadrement, because the typically French practice of cumul des mandats also operated inside the PCF. Thus, it was not Page 20 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals uncommon to find party functionaries with responsibilities in each of the 3 categories listed above. (13) For a comprehensive account of the role of Communist intellectuals in the PCF during this period, see Jeannine Verdès-Leroux, Au service du parti (Paris: Fayard, 1983). (14) David Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals (London: André Deutsch, 1964), 366. (15) Pierre Naville, ‘L'Intellectuel communiste’ (1956), in La Révolution et les intellectuels (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 156. (16) It should be noted, however, that a large proportion of party cadres at the lower levels of the PCF (i.e. in the cells and sections) were not full-time officials, and should not, stricto sensu, be considered as part of the corps of permanents, as they did not officially gain any financial remuneration for their activities. (17) This would be compounded by the tacit injunction against horizontal communication between different units at each level of the party structure. Official party rules only allowed interaction between the different levels of the chain of command, i.e. between cell and section, section and fédération etc. See the ‘Statuts du Parti Communiste Français’, adopted at the 23rd Congress of the PCF in May 1979, in Cahiers du communisme, June–July 1979, esp. pp. 412–16. (18) Maurice Thorez's leadership of the PCF spanned more than three decades, from 1930 to his death in 1964. (19) For an (unfortunately not atypical) example of this dubious approach, see Philippe Robrieux, Histoire intérieure du Parti Communiste (Paris: Fayard, 1980– 4), iv. 145–9. For Cogniot's (equally unreliable) reconstruction of his career in the party apparatus, see his memoirs, Parti pris, 2 vols. (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1977–8). (20) See Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals, 113–14. (21) Andrè Wurmser, Fidèlement vôtre: Soixante ans de vie politique et littéraire (Paris: Grasset, 1979), 377. (22) Antoine Spire, Profession permanent (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 86; emphasis added. (23) As stated in the resolution of the Conseil National of the PCF in Feb. 1980: ‘méconnaître l'apport irremplaçable de celles et de ceux qui ont une compétence spéciale sur une question donnée serait une profonde erreur. Dans ces conditions, la tâche du Parti est d'assurer en son sein une activité intellectuelle véritablement collective où chaque avancée particulière peut devenir le bien de Page 21 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals tous, et où I'expérience de tous éclaire chaque avancée particulière.’ See Cahiers du communisme, Mar. 1980, p. 152; emphasis added. (24) See Kriegel, Les Communistes français, 211–13. (25) See ‘L'Organisation du travail de la direction du P.C.F.’, Cahiers du communisme, Aug.–Sept. 1979, pp. 163–5. (26) Spire, Profession permanent, 148. (27) Ellenstein claimed that, following the publication of the first volume, he was summoned by Roland Leroy (the responsable of the party section de travail on intellectuals) and external policy advisor Jean Kanapa in Sept. 1972, and informed of the party's displeasure with the positive references to Leon Trotsky in his work. He was also taken to task for excessive quotations from the work of the historian Isaac Deutscher, the author of a number of influential works on early Soviet history, notably a 3-volume biography of Trotsky. See Jean Ellenstein, Ils voustrompent, camarades! (Paris: Belfond, 1981), 27. (28) Guy Michelat and Michel Simon, Classe, religion et comportement politique (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1977). (29) Quoted from an article in L'Humanité, 7 Jan. 1967, in Verdès-Leroux, Auservice du parti. (30) For a critical but not unsympathetic assessment of his career as a poet and as an intellectuel de parti, see Pierre Daix, Aragon: Une vie à changer (Paris: Seuil, 1975) (31) The full list of signatories of this appel des 75 was published in L'Humanité, 15 Jan. 1980. (32) In his ‘Valse des adieux’, written for the final issue of Les Lettresfrançaises (10 Oct. 1972), Aragon made an extremely harsh evaluation of his career: ‘ma vie, cette vie dont je sais si bien le goût amer qu'elle m'a laissé, cette vie à la fin des fins qu'on ne m'en casse plus les oreilles, qu'on ne me raconte plus combien elle a été magnifique, qu'on ne me bassine plus de ma légende. Cette vie comme un jeu terrible où j'ai perdu. Que j'ai gâchée de fond en comble.’ Quoted in Pierre Daix, Aragon, 429; emphasis added. (33) It should be noted, however, that he also wrote a few articles in what the PCF describes as la presse bourgeoise: a review of Henri Fiszbin's Les Bouches s'ouvrent in Le Monde (25 Apr. 1980), and an article on the crisis in the PCF in Le Monde diplomatique (Feb. 1982). Bruhat died in Feb. 1983, leaving a comprehensive account of his experiences in the PCF in his memoirs, Il n'est jamais trop tard (Paris: Albin Michel, 1983).

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals (34) The responsable à la littérature may not necessarily be an intellectual, of course, even though the latter would, by disposition and temperament, be particularly well-suited to this type of task. See Kriegel, Les Communistes français, 131. (35) For an account of the life of a Parisian party cell between 1978 and 1981, see Jane Jenson and George Ross, The View from Inside: A French Communist Cell in Crisis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). (36) See David Caute, The Fellow-Travellers, rev. edn. (London: Yale, 1988). (37) Annie Kriegel's characteristically scathing (but not entirely inaccurate) description of this groupe pittoresque is worth noting: ‘un groupe … bien savoureux d'habiles, de naïfs, de prudents, de modestes et de désintéressés, de vrais communistes et de faux radicaux, d'ex-n'importe quoi, de redoutables experts et de dilettantes, d'amateurs d'estrade et d'amateurs d'ombre, de discrets intermédiates chargés ou non de bons offices, et de voyants porteurs de noms, de titres, de décorations, de charges, d'honneurs, de science, de cheveux blancs et de respectabilité…’. See Kriegel, Les Communistes français, 10. (38) See Philip Williams and Martin Harrison, Politics and Society in de Gaulle's Republic (New York: Anchor, 1973), 113 – 14n. (39) Quoted in Yvonne Quilès and Jean Tornikian, Sous le PC, les communistes (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 79; emphasis added. In keeping with his libertarianism, and providing a good illustration of the increasing difficulties faced by the PCF in rallying the support of fellow-travellers by the late 1970s, Tortel refused to support the party in the 1979 European elections. (40) For the full list of signatories, see L'Humanité, 28 May 1979. (41) See Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals, 271–2. (42) See L'Humanité, 2 Mar. 1978. (43) Ibid. 14 May 1984. (44) Ibid. 24 May 1984. (45) Georges Marchais, ibid.. 4 May 1978. (46) From Georges Marchais's report to the plenary meeting of the PCF Central Committee on 27–8 Apr., ibid. 28 Apr. 1978; emphasis added. (47) Jacques Chambaz, ‘Les Communistes et les intellectuels’, Cahiers du communisme, June–July 1978, p. 29. (48) Ibid.; emphasis added. Page 23 of 24

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The Unity and Diversity of Communist Intellectuals (49) David Bell, ‘The Communist Party’, in David Bell and Eric Shaw (eds.), The Left in France: Towards the Socialist Republic (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1983), 127–78. (50) Ibid. 156; emphasis added. (51) Ibid. 141. (52) Ibid. 157. (53) From La Vie du parti, Aug. 1940; quoted in André Rossi (Angelo Tasca), A Communist Party in Action (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1955), 214. (54) Kriegel, Les Communistes français. (55) Ibid. 127; emphasis added. (56) For an account of Annie Kriegel's role as an inflexible ideological commissar during the Stalinist era, see Edgar Morin, Autocritique (Paris: Seuil, 1975), 167– 8. (57) Bell, ‘The Communist Party’, 154. (58) Annie Kriegel, Le Communisme au jour le jour: Chroniques du Figaro 1976– 1979 (Paris: Hachette, 1979). (59) Ibid. 7; this proverb would also, in all likelihood, meet with strong approval from Communist quarters—an illustration of the fact that many Communists could leave the party but still retain its moral values. (60) Ibid. 245; emphasis added. (61) Ibid. (62) Ibid. 246. (63) Ibid. 247. (64) Ibid. 335. (65) Ibid. 336.

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective Sudhir Hazareesingh

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses the conflict between Communist intellectuals and the leadership of the French Communist Party (PCF) which developed after the elections of March 1978. The role of intellectuals in the French labour movement has always been a source of controversy, suggesting the existence of an inherent conflict between the PCF and the intellectual community at large. This conflict resulted in frequent crises inside the party, which pitted the Communist intellectuals against party leaders. The chapter reveals the significant fluctuations in intellectual support for the PCF caused by their dissatisfaction with party policies. Keywords:   communist intellectuals, French Communist Party, political conflict, elections, labour movement

THE conflict which developed after the elections of March 1978 between Communist intellectuals and the leadership of the parti de la classe ouvrière was by no means unprecedented. As noted in Chapter 2, the role of intellectuals in the French labour movement was always a source of great controversy. Even before the creation of the Section Française de l'Internationale Communiste in 1920, the political and parliamentary wing of the French socialist movement was the object of marked hostility from revolutionary syndicalist quarters. Whilst this feeling of repulsion was partly a function of strategic differences, the underlying source of the problem was that most syndicalists rejected the politiques on the grounds of their non-proletarian social origins.

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective If it is recognized that this type of conflict between worker and intellectual was deeply embedded in the political culture of French socialism before 1914, a profound element of continuity may be traced in earlier and later phases in the history of the labour movement in France. From this standpoint, there was a sense in which the creation of the Section Françhise de l'Internationale Communiste1 in 1920 represented an extension of the traditional cleavage between the intellectual and proletarian wings of the socialist movement. As noted in Chapter 1, the first generation of French Communist leaders were by no means solely of working-class origin. Through the driving influence of the Third International, however, the PCF rapidly acquired a ‘Bolshevized’ (p.134) image, which was reflected in the progressive emergence of a generation of political cadres recruited overwhelmingly from the working class.2 On the other hand, the SFIO, the vieille maison of French socialism, broadly regarded itself as the inheritor of the parliamentary wing of the French labour movement, which had been dominated before 1914 by the imposing intellectual figure of Jean Jaurès. Its immediate purpose, as defined by its leader Léon Blum (like Jaurès, a product of the École Normale Supérieure), was to manage ‘les affaires de la société bourgeoise au mieux des intérêts de la classe ouvrière’.3 If a strict definition of the PCF as the parti de la classe ouvrière would be as much of an over-simplification as the depiction of the SFIO as the parti des intellectuels, such a dichotomy none the less retains an important kernel of truth. Each of these organizations could be identified as the bearers of two distinct traditions within the political culture of the French Left. The PCF inherited some of the classic anti-intellectual traits of the pre-war revolutionary syndicalists, and this disposition was reinforced by the impact of Stalinist ideology and practice on the party. The SFIO extended the pragmatic approach typified by Jaurès into a reformist tradition (at the level of practice), which a leading historian of the French socialist movement characterized as the ‘socialisme des intellectuels’.4 By this token, the Socialist tradition could be described as one which sought to accommodate intellectuals within its ranks on their own terms, attempting to harness their talents in such a way as to maximize the political resources of the party, and enhance its administrative potential when in government. It may be argued that the PCF, on the other hand, developed partly as a reaction against this tradition, and its practical and doctrinal fidelity to the revolutionary potential of the French proletariat was coupled with a deep sense of hostility to a (p.135) stratum of society which seemed to symbolize the vices of the traditional social order. This is what Annie Kriegel suggested when she remarked that, in the eyes of the PCF, intellectuals ‘semblent porter avec eux, en eux, un héritage inaliénable transmis par les institutions de la société établie, un héritage conduisant ànier la nécéssité d'une rupture révolutionnaire de l'histoire humaine pour impliquer, au contraire, son unité’.5

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective Intra-Party Conflicts The claim which suggests the existence of an inherent conflict between the PCF and the intellectual community at large is largely supported by an examination of the frequent crises which erupted inside the party, and pitted Communist intellectuals (amongst others) against the leaders of the organization. The conflictual rapports between intellectuals and their party obviously took somewhat different forms, and it will not be necessary to provide a particularly detailed analysis of each of them. None the less, it will be useful to give some indication of significant fluctuations in intellectual support for the PCF over time. An exhaustive chronicle of intellectual discontent in the PCF since the Liberation alone would be entirely beyond the limited scope of these remarks. Intellectuals expressed their dissatisfaction with party policies for an extremely wide range of reasons, and the motivations behind the numerous ruptures avec le parti were extremely diverse, and quite often mutually exclusive. By the same token, national and international events which led some intellectuals to leave the party also served to induce others to join it. Before developing this argument, it is worth bearing in mind that some intellectual ruptures did not lend themselves to any obvious scheme of classification. If the open letter of resignation addressed to party leader Maurice Thorez by the poet and deputy of Martinique Aimé Césaire in October 1956 contained many of the standard intellectual criticisms of the party at the time,6 the (p.136) thrust of his argument (and driving force behind his resignation) was that the PCF's colonial policy was totally ill-suited to assist ‘les peuples noirs de manière effective dans leurs luttes d'aujourd'hui et de demain’.7 More than two decades later, the officially approved destruction of an immigrants' hostel by the Communist municipality of Vitry provoked the resignation of several established members of the PCF intellectual community, including the poet Eugène Guillevic, the philosopher Étienne Balibar, the publishing editor Antoine Spire, as well as the writer and academic Raymond Jean, who described the events as ‘la goutte d'eau qui a fait déborder le vase’.8 The notion of generation

None the less, a semblance of classificatory order within this ebb and flow of intellectual identification with the PCF may be established by taking the notion of generation as the principal analytical instrument. Although the methodological utility of this concept is still a source of controversy,9 it will be used here simply as a means of delineating the common experiences of successive cohorts of intellectuals since the Liberation. This should enable the derivation of the salient political events in each period, and thus the identification of clashes between the PCF leadership and a relatively significant number of party intellectuals. The principal criterion for defining a generation of Communist intellectuals, from this standpoint, will not be the date of birth, but rather the time at which party membership was taken out, in conjunction with a common experience of (and, on occasion, participation in) significant national Page 3 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective and international events, over a period of up to ten years. Under the guidance of these precepts, four generations of Communist intellectuals may be distinguished since 1940, with each generation being identified with a series of formative political experiences. (p.137) First, the body of intellectuals who joined the underground party organization during the Occupation of France and immediately after the Liberation, when the PCF participated in national government and held a commanding position in the balance of political forces. This can be described as the generation of the Resistance. Secondly, those intellectuals who adhered to the PCF after its withdrawal from national government, as the party settled into the attitude of total opposition which characterized its position during the first decade of the post-war era. This group constituted the generation of the Cold War. Next, the wave of intellectual membership which accompanied the demographic explosion of the 1960s, as the PCF uneasily made the transition from the charismatic leadership of Maurice Thorez to the pragmatic approach of Waldeck Rochet. This will be termed the generation of de-Stalinization. Finally, those intellectuals who came to the PCF after the events of 1968, as the strategy of left-wing unity, pursued for so long without success by the party, was finally translated into a programmatic agreement with the Socialists. This group may be defined as the generation of the ‘Programme commun’. Periods of harmony

Within each generation of Communist intellectuals, the incidence of dissatisfaction with party policies fluctuated considerably, primarily as a function of major international events in which the PCF had a strong stake. But a rapid acceleration in the pace of events abroad was by no means a sufficient condition to generate an internal crisis in the party. There were, indeed, long spells during which relations between Communist intellectuals and the party leadership were relatively harmonious. There was almost no serious friction during the Resistance or in the immediate aftermath of the Liberation, when the prestige of the party (and that of its Soviet ally) reached unequalled heights in the eyes of the intellectual community at large.10 Similarly, the great mass of party intellectuals rallied to the PCF during its phase of intransigent opposition at the height of the Cold War. With respect to (p.138) the following decade, party intellectuals were relatively quiescent until the combined impact of the events of 1968 in France and Czechoslovakia. Finally, the intellectual generation of the Programme commun, as will be seen later, developed an enthusiastic rapport with the party leadership throughout the phase of consolidation of left-wing unity with the Socialists. Phases of conflict

Alternating with these phases of stability were moments of uncertainty and dissatisfaction, which periodically boiled over into a phase which may be described as a crisis: a disruption of the particular state of equilibrium in the Page 4 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective relations between Communist intellectuals and the party leadership, invariably accompanied by a number of ruptures avec le parti. As indicated previously, there were clear precedents to the crisis of 1978–80. Some intellectuals of the Resistance generation refused to accept the total sub-ordination of the PCF to the strategic directives of the international communist movement, and the party's uncritical defence of even the most repellent aspects of Stalinist rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. A typical example of such a rebellion was that of Edgar Morin, a young journalist and writer who became involved with the party organization, through the Resistance movement, in November 1942. His commitment to the PCF was unquestioning over the next five years, but he began to doubt the party's good faith after the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Kominform in June 1948. The turning-point came with the PCF's resolute defence of the show trials in Eastern Europe. Deeply perturbed by these events, and entirely unconvinced by the party's contorted explanations, Morin refused to renew his party membership in 1950, and was formally expelled by his cell a year later.11 The domestic and international ramifications of major events in the communist world again proved to be the effective source of the serious internal crises which engulfed the next two generations of Communist intellectuals. The generation of the Cold War was profoundly unsettled by the secret speech delivered by Nikita Khrushchev at the twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956, in which the Soviet leader (p.139) denounced the rule of Stalin for its gross violations of ‘socialist legality’.12 The historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie joined the party in early 1949, and subscribed to its Cold War mentality with what he described as ‘une intensité liturgique’.13 He began to question the validity of his previous principles after the publication of Khrushchev's speech in France, and in view of the dogged persistence with which the PCF leadership denied its very existence. Le Roy Ladurie resigned from the party in November 1956, shortly after the Soviet intervention in Hungary;14 the events of 1956 proved to be a turning-point for many of his generation.15 Similarly, the double impact of the May events in Paris and the premature suppression of the ‘Prague Spring’ by the tanks of the Warsaw Pact occasioned a wave of internal intellectual opposition to the positions taken by the PCF on both these issues. The party's vehement denunciation of the student movement led to a public protest by a group of thirty-six Communist intellectuals, who signed a petition which was published in Le Monde.16 Some party intellectuals reacted even more strongly to the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and this precipitated a movement which, in a number of instances, would end in a rupture avec le parti. The most notorious example of this process was the philosopher Roger Garaudy, who belonged to the pre-war generation of party intellectuals (he had joined the PCF in 1933) who had eagerly assumed the role of ‘philosophical gendarmes and heresy-hunters’17 during the Stalinist era. A member of the Bureau Politique Page 5 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective since 1961, Garaudy began to articulate a critical approach to the PCF's failure to adapt its political strategy to the important social and cultural changes that had taken place in Europe since the end of the Cold War.18 In this context, he upbraided his colleagues for their failure to draw appropriate political conclusions from the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and was expelled from the PCF (p.140) at the party's nineteenth Congress in February 1970. It was not altogether uncommon to find intellectuals of the pre-war and Resistance generations departing from the PCF at this juncture, after, in a sense, reconciling themselves to their Stalinist past. Like Garaudy, the historian Madeleine Rébérioux chose to remain in the PCF after 1956, despite the party's more than ambiguous attitude towards de-Stalinization. She was expelled in early 1969, for refusing to renounce her collaboration with a breakaway political magazine edited, amongst others, by the dissident party journalist Paul Noirot,19 who proved to be another casualty in this intra-party dispute. After this brief outline of major crises experienced by each generation of Communist intellectuals since the Liberation, an attempt can be made to compare the relative proportion of intellectuals actively involved in the serious intra-party conflicts of 1948–9, 1956–7, 1968–70, and 1978–80. In keeping with the methodological principles outlined in Chapter 3, the notion of ‘active involvement’ will be used to refer to the practices of intellectuals who expressed public disagreements with official party policy during these crises. Active involvement did not, of course, always culminate in resignation or expulsion from the party. A typology of critical intellectual responses to each crisis formed a continuum, which began with public criticism of the party line; resignation from the organization was used only as a weapon of last resort. Although this criterion of public participation excludes, of necessity, the cohort of intellectuals who vigorously debated the burning issues of each crisis in the relative anonymity of their cellule, it may at least provide a rough estimate of the extent of intellectual involvement in each crisis.

The Limits of the Quantitative Approach What constitutes the most effective means of assessing the relative proportions of critical intellectual activity during these crises? Although a rigorous estimate is not entirely within reach, a number of available indicators may be used to advance a plausible hypothesis. Common sense might suggest that a glance at the (p.141) annual estimates of party membership might constitute a useful point of departure, in so far as a sharp fall in the total number of members (or even a decrease in the rate of expansion) would at least indicate the existence of serious internal problems in the party. But this quantitative approach would not lead very far in this enquiry, for at least five reasons. First, as noted previously, membership figures officially released by the PCF should be treated with considerable scepticism, even when they indicated an absolute decline in the total number of party members. Figures for the 1947–54 Page 6 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective period, for example, showed a remarkable loss of more than 400,000 members.20 But these membership figures represented the total number of cards sent out to each Federation by the Central Committee, with no indication of how many membership cards were actually placed by each Federation. These 400,000 members may simply have been a product of the creative accounting techniques used by the cadres of the Section Centrale d'Organisation to conceal an even greater decline in membership over this period. Secondly, even if actual membership figures were correct, there would be no way of estimating the proportion of active party members at any given time. As indicated, an assessment of the number of critical intellectuals involved in the crises depends, to a considerable extent, on gauging the level of public participation in internal party conflicts. Official PCF estimates, however, did not make any distinction between active and passive party membership. In other words, a member who took out his party card every year but only symbolically participated in the public life of the organization was considered on the same footing as the individual who was substantively involved in party activities. Thus, an overall fall in party membership between 1947 and 1954 could have been occasioned by the departure of passive members, and this should in no way influence the conclusions of this argument. Unfortunately, the information available does not allow this pertinent distinction to be drawn. Thirdly, relatively accurate membership figures would not provide a useful indication of the number of intellectuals in the party at any given time. Although the PCF periodically provided (p.142) estimates of the social composition of its membership, its conception of the intellectual was too deeply imbued with the socio-professional paradigm to be of analytical value to this enquiry. Thus, a large proportion of members regarded by the PCF as intellectuals should not be so considered if the approach taken in this investigation were to be adopted. By the same token, an important substratum of party officials of working-class origin should be designated as intellectuals, on the basis of their access to the training facilities provided by the network of écoles des cadres. This appellation will be maintained, despite the fact that these functionaries were considered as members of the proletariat by the PCF. It should again be emphasized that the party's method of assessing the social composition of its own membership was most unsatisfactory. Following the approach traditionally adopted by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the PCF collated its permanent officials under the socio-professional occupation held prior to their current position in the appareil. The patent absurdity of this method was reflected in the official description of party leader Georges Marchais as an ouvrier qualifié, even though his most recent spell as a metalworker stretched back to 1951. Fourthly, even an accurate breakdown of the number of active intellectuals would be of limited value to this enterprise. As indicated above, the critical intellectual used a diversity of répertoires d'action in contesting the positions Page 7 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective adopted by the party leadership. Ways of articulating opposition could be found which did not necessarily entail a rupture avec le parti: public denunciation of the party line in the press, critical activity in the organization, and meetings with the leadership. Accurate membership figures, on the other hand, could only provide an indication of the number of active intellectuals whose antagonism with the party leadership was so irreconcilable as to occasion a rupture. Thus, the measurement derived from this procedure would be flawed. Finally, it is worth pointing out that the rise and fall in party membership over a specific period was generally connected to a broader nexus of factors, only one of which consisted of the purely internal relationship between intellectuals and the PCF leadership. For example, the PCF's official admission of a fall in membership between 1959 and 1961 would, if correct, have to be explained in the context of a series of sharp electoral set-backs inflicted upon the party by General de Gaulle, in the wake of his (p.143) return to office in 1958. It would be rather difficult to identify an immediate connection between this particular phase of membership decline and the incidence of critical intellectual activity in the party. Similarly, the PCF officially admitted a loss of over 100,000 members between 1982 and 1987.21 Whilst this was almost certainly an underestimation, it is clear that the internal crisis within the party in the 1980s could not constitute a sufficient explanation for this phenomenon. As argued in the Introduction, the decline would have to be attributed to the national conjoncture politique especially the relegation of the Communists to a marginal role within the political system in the 1980s, and the wider political evolution of radical intellectuals during the Mitterrand presidency. The unreliable character of official pronouncements

If fluctuation of membership could not be considered as a useful indicator of the extent of intellectual involvement in party crises, could official party statements on these intra-party conflicts serve as an initial guide? Again, this approach would be unlikely to yield satisfactory results. One of the distinctive features of Communist political culture, as shall be seen later, was a strong emphasis on the notion of party unity. This conception had many ramifications in the organizational structure of the party, and was probably best reflected in the manner in which the principles of democratic centralism were applied in the PCF. The leadership traditionally acted upon the assumption that its directives were unreservedly supported by party members, who, in theory, had played some part in the formulation of policy. Open and public expression of opposition to party policy, according to this logic, could only be the work of a small minority. The PCF leadership's standard public response to the intellectuals' criticism, therefore, was to question its representativeness, and thus undermine the thrust of the arguments by defining their authors as an insignificant band of disgruntled activists.

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective (p.144) The official response to the petition22 signed by thirty-six Communist intellectuals in 1968 was, from this point of view, entirely characteristic. Addressing a session of the Central Committee, party leader Waldeck Rochet stated categorically: ‘Quelques intellectuels communists … ont exprimé leur désaccord avec la ligne du parti … Nous avons remarqué que parmi ceux, très peu nombreux, qui ont exprimé leur désaccord avec la ligne du parti, on trouve des récidivistes qui proclament en fait leur désaccord chaque fois que la lutte s'aiguise et qu'il faut faire face à l'attaque de la bourgeoisie.’23 Official statements on the magnitude of intra-party conflicts, then, could not be expected to serve as a useful guide to the extent of intellectual involvement in PCF crises. It would be fair to conclude that, in general, the numerical estimates of the PCF provided an evaluation of what the party leadership believed ought to have been the case in a given situation (chiffre politique) rather than an assessment of the actual balance of forces (chiffre arithmétique).

The Instrument Chosen Having rejected party membership and official pronouncements as sufficient indicators, a more fruitful line of enquiry may be developed. This will consist in reconciling the intellectuals' subjective assessment of their strength in each crisis with the practical responses of the PCF leadership to the criticisms formulated. This approach has the undeniable merit of providing an insight into the ways in which the principal agents of intra-party conflict evaluated their number and significance, and this can be balanced against an analysis of the immediate steps taken by the party leadership to counter the intellectuals' critique. The party's actions provided a direct indication of the leadership's perception of the relative seriousness of each crisis, and, therefore, constitute a much more secure foundation for assessing the real extent of intellectual involvement than the hackneyed public statements of party officialdom, whose sole purpose, as has been seen, was to minimize the significance of each intraparty conflict. (p.145) A number of preliminary conclusions could be reached regarding the nature of successive intellectual crises in the PCF since the Liberation. A clear pattern emerges, which, in a number of respects, found its culminating point in the crisis of 1978–80. This comparative assessment of these crises will take five central parameters into account. The first is essentially quantitative, seeking to evaluate the relative proportion of rebellious party intellectuals in the later crisis as compared to earlier ones. The second takes the behaviour of the intellectuals as its point of reference, attempting to establish whether continuity or change could be found in their general pattern of behaviour from one crisis to the next. The third is based on the attitude of the party leadership to the crises, trying to identify similarities and differences in the methods of crisis management used in different periods. The fourth is a historical comparison of the original types of actions and events which triggered each important crisis, seeking to emphasize the relatively broader sources of the intellectuals' discontent in the later crisis. Page 9 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective The fifth is a general reconstruction of the short- and middle-term effects of each crisis on the party itself, suggesting that the crisis of 1978–80 has to be evaluated in the wider context of the evolution of the core political values of radical intellectuals in France. The level of participation in intra-party conflicts

The party intellectuals of the Resistance generation, who adopted openly critical positions towards the PCF at the height of the Cold War, were an extremely small and isolated group. Their doubts concerning the methods of Stalinist rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in no way troubled the hardened convictions of the vast majority of their colleagues. Edgar Morin's autobiography vividly described the profound sense of solitude he felt at the time of his rupture avec le parti.24 The few intellectuals who acted like him were clearly aware that they were swimming against a powerful ideological current. A large number of party intellectuals felt no qualms whatsoever in adopting positions which most would later regret: their approach reflected an uncritical sense of devotion to the Soviet Union. As André Wurmser (p.146) stated simply: ‘Nous défendions l'U.R.S.S., et ne songions pas à le nier.’25 It would be safe to conclude, therefore, that the climactic events of the late 1940s and early 1950s in Europe did little to undermine the faith of most Communist intellectuals in their party. Undoubtedly more serious, from this point of view, was the concatenation of events which followed the publication of Nikita Khrushchev's speech at the twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. In stark contrast to the attitude displayed by most intellectuals at the height of the Cold War, the PCF leadership was faced, on this occasion, with an internal rebellion of relatively more significant proportions. There were loud public protests against the party's tepid attitude towards de-Stalinization, and its unqualified endorsement of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in November 1956. It should be noted that these strictures came mainly from intellectuals outside the appareil. Pablo Picasso joined nine other party intellectuals in signing a motion calling for an extraordinary party Congress to allay the ‘malaise profond’ caused by the events in Hungary.26 But although there were a few other scattered instances of group rebellions of this type, and subsequently published material revealed that many intellectuels de parti were deeply unsettled by the party's approach at the time,27 the incidence of open defiance of the leadership by party intellectuals was quite limited. Some critics, such as the historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, drifted away from the PCF as a result of the events of 1956. On the whole, however, the party was able to weather the storm with relative ease, and the criticisms articulated by the group of rebellious intellectuals were disdainfully rejected. Picasso, whose notoriety entitled him to kid-glove treatment, was allowed to air his grievances to party leader Maurice Thorez on a few occasions. The results were invariably disappointing: ‘Chaque fois que j'essaie de lui parler … c'est exactement comme s'il me disait: va jouer au jardin.’28

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective A decade later, critical intellectual activity took on a new (p.147) dimension, with the emergence of rebellion within the charmed circle of the intellectuels de parti. Although Roger Garaudy's personal trajectory during and after 1968 could in no way be taken as the norm of critical intellectual behaviour,29 he symbolized the fact that intellectual criticism was no longer the preserve of marginalized party members outside the appareil. But despite this fresh development, the incidence of open intellectual hostility to party policy was probably no greater than in 1956–7. The spreading of the intra-party dispute to the inner sanctum of the PCF was, in a sense, compensated for by the fact that the party's official reaction to the invasion of Czechoslovakia was immediately critical, in contrast to its attitude to the Hungarian crisis.30 The party's frosty response to the events of May 1968 occasioned, as noted above, a number of complaints from intellectual quarters. But this was also largely offset by an overwhelming suspicion of all forms of gauchisme. Thus, an intellectual such as Jean Rony, who would actively participate in the intra-party debate after 1978, found himself in total agreement with the PCF's reservations about the student movement at the time. Recalling his attitude ten years later, he stated: ‘Je n'ai qu'une hâte: que tout rentre dans l'ordre.’31 The crisis of 1978–80, however, was different, from both a quantitative and qualitative point of view. Pressure on the PCF to alter its basic political strategy came from a wide range of left-wing activists and sympathizers. In December 1979 a number of Socialist and Communist intellectuals launched a campaign to revive the Union de la Gauche. Their campaign for Union dans les Luttes raised no fewer than 140,000 signatures within a year.32 (p.148) There was an equally high level of intellectual involvement in the intra-party dispute at all levels of the PCF organization. A petition originating from the Jacques Duclos cell in Aix-enProvence was signed by more than 1,000 party members, including a substantial proportion of intellectuals. Leading party figures such as Jean Ellenstein and Louis Althusser published a series of critical articles in Le Monde,33 and even Communist journals such as France-Nouvelle and La Nouvelle Critique carried contributions which expressed critical points of view. The crisis confirmed a tendency, which had already been visible a decade earlier, for critical intellectual activity to expand into the higher spheres of the appareil. The rebellious wave took on such proportions that the party leadership was forced, after an initial phase of stonewalling, to establish a form of dialogue with its critics. This process culminated in the Vitry meeting in early December 1978, at which 400 party intellectuals discussed a wide range of contentious issues with members of the Bureau Politique. Speaking at the end of the final session, party leader Georges Marchais stated that the leadership had derived, as a result of this meeting, a much clearer understanding of the criticisms addressed by the intellectuals. He expressed the hope that ‘le débat prenne son véritable sens, c'est à dire que l'on tienne compte, les uns et les autres, des opinions émises’.34 This public commitment of the party leader to establishing a modus Page 11 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective vivendi with critical intellectuals constituted a radical departure from previous party practice, and was obviously an indication of the seriousness with which the party leadership viewed the development of this intra-party dispute. By this token, it is safe to infer that the rapport de forces inside the party had been altered in favour of the critics, and this represented a clear sign of the numerical significance of the latter. It may be concluded, therefore, that successive crises in the PCF since the Liberation saw a progression in the extent of intellectual involvement in intraparty conflicts, and that this process culminated in the events of 1978–80. This phenomenon of greater participation was accompanied by distinctive changes in the patterns of behaviour of the critical intellectuals, as will be demonstrated in the following section. (p.149) The underlying motivations of critical intellectuals

An attempt will be made here to determine whether there was continuity or change in the modes of critical intellectual behaviour in intra-party disputes. Is it possible to identify a general pattern of behaviour adopted by party intellectuals in successive crises, and did the attitude displayed by the critics between 1978 and 1980 conform to it? The principal object of concern here will not be how Communist intellectuals were critical of party policy, but rather why and from what perspectives they decided to rebel against the directives of the leadership. In other words, the diverse practices of intellectual criticism (which have already been described as forming a continuum ranging from oppositional activity in the cellule to outright resignation from the party) will be of far less interest than the convictions which underlay their emergence. From this perspective, four key differences will be identified between the attitudes of party intellectuals after 1978 and those of earlier generations of critics. Social identity

Earlier generations of French Communist intellectuals were deeply marked, as has already been emphasized, by the norms and values which prevailed in the international communist movement during the Stalinist era. Intellectuals were constantly held in suspicion solely as a result of their social origins: the belief in the inferiority of intellectuals in relation to the working class was one of the natural consequences of this disposition.35 The intellectual was constantly forced to deny his subjectivity in the act of placing himself ‘sur les positions de la classe ouvriére.’36 Critical intellectuals were by no means exempt from this attitude, and this often served to act as a brake upon their oppositional activities during intra-party conflicts. Edgar Morin, for example, agonized for more than a year over whether to retain his party card, even though he realized that his divergences with the PCF had become irreconcilable. What held him back, however, was partly a feeling of guilt, derived from his status as an intellectual, in abandoning (p.150) an organization which had taught him that the defence of the interests of the working class constituted the summum bonum. He Page 12 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective believed, at the time, that salus extra ecclesiam non est: ‘j'avais peur d'être regardé partout où j'irais comme un renégat …’37 From this angle, the intellectuals who participated in the intra-party debates of 1978–80 were of an entirely different disposition. For the first time in the party's history a significant proportion of dissidents sought to emphasize their distinctive identity as intellectuals, and refused to yield to the heavy-handed Stalinist technique of forcing critics to recant their heretical views on the grounds that they did not correspond to the opinions of the working class. To give a typical illustration of the pervasiveness of this tactic in the PCF: the wave of criticism which followed the tentative realignment of the party on Soviet positions after 1978 was initially dismissed as intellectual verbiage by the party leadership. L'Humanité followed this act by publishing indignant letters from working-class party members, denouncing the trivial nature of the intellectuals' criticism. A collective note from a group of ouvriers spécialisés from Sochaux, after explaining the benefits Soviet workers derived from their system of social security, stated emphatically: ‘C'est regrettable de le dire, mais arrêtez, les copains, de déblatérer sur le parti, c'est nous que vous critiquez, nous les travailleurs, parce que notre parti, c'est le parti des travailleurs.’38 On the whole, however, the intellectuals were undeterred by such attempts to blackmail them into submission by appealing to their instinct de classe. Throughout the crisis of 1978–80 a large proportion of critics insisted on defending their positions as intellectuals in the party, and, therefore, staking their claim to be considered as full members of the organization. As Gérard Belloin noted: ‘il y a un immense besoin des intellectuels communistes d'apporter leur contribution d'intellectuels communistes à la politique et aux politiques’.39 How far this demand represented a challenge to the entrenched social and political supremacy of the classe ouvrière in the PCF countercommunity is a question which will be explored in the following chapter. (p.151) Legitimacy of action

A second important difference between the 1978–80 crisis and earlier intra-party conflicts was the legitimacy attached to critical action by the intellectuals. In the Thorezian era the rigid application of the organizational principles of democratic centralism precluded the possibility of criticizing party policy after its official adoption. Party members had the right to submit dissenting opinions during the decision-making process, but could not depart from established policy guidelines after they had been issued by the leadership. The truth status of a party directive, therefore, was established merely by virtue of its proclamation. If party policy was correct by definition, it was impossible to err by following it: the individual who disagreed with a directive could not be correct against the party as a whole. This sophistical notion of vérité de parti was perfectly summarized to Jorge Semprun by a Spanish Communist Party leader in 1964: ‘Mieux vaut se tromper avec le parti, dans le parti, que d'avoir raison hors de lui Page 13 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective et contre lui.’40 Intellectuals who expressed their disagreement with party policies were aware that they were transgressing a sacred organizational edict of the PCF. They rarely, however, called for a systematic revision of the principles of democratic centralism.41 In the 1970s the internal life of the PCF was still basically governed by the same principles, despite the introduction of a few cosmetic changes in the new party constitution42 adopted at the twenty-third Congress in May 1979. After 1978, however, the great mass of critical intellectuals insisted on their inalienable right to express their opposition to party policy, and pressed the leadership to revise substantively the organizational principles of the PCF. This approach was aimed at establishing radically new foundations for critical intellectual activity in the party, so as to (p.152) enable wider and more systematic discussion of official policy. Again, underlying this position was a firm resolve on the part of intellectuals to transform their traditional role in the party in such a way as to enhance their distinctive contribution to the organization. As Hélène Parmelin noted, party intellectuals ‘acceptent de moins en moins de devenir les pions de soumission d'une organisation’.43 Optimism of the will

The firmness of purpose demonstrated with regard to both subjective status and identity on the one hand, and participation in party life on the other, was indicative of a much more basic sentiment which informed the attitude of critical intellectuals after 1978: a pervasive sense of confidence in the legitimacy of their collective démarche. Previous generations of critical intellectuals, as noted, were often painfully divided against themselves in their attempt to establish a constructive basis for dialogue with the party leadership. The internal values of the organization set such a high store on unity and cohesion that the critical intellectual was treated in the same way as the pestiféré of medieval times, and made conscious, in every way conceivable, of his betrayal of the sacred norms of the institution. In the Thorezian era this treatment was applied with such Stalinist rigour that the entire frame of existence of the critical intellectual could be shattered: he would be shunned by all his former friends who were still in the party,44 and, in many cases, even find himself abandoned by his close relatives.45 The recourse to these extremely crude forms of psychological pressure was no longer available to the party leadership after 1978, as the critical intellectuals showed a much greater sense of solidarity and community of purpose than their predecessors (p.153) in earlier generations. This was, in an obvious sense, partly a function of their numerical significance: while the Thorezian leadership had found it easy to subject a relatively small and isolated group of intellectual critics to this type of treatment, the PCF authorities would have had some difficulty in adopting a similar approach towards a much wider (and more heterogenous) corpus of rebels after 1978. But, whilst the weight of numbers clearly served to confirm the critical intellectuals' belief in the justice of their Page 14 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective cause, their sense of optimism was undoubtedly derived from a broader awareness of the inherent value of the principles they were defending, of which the most basic was the development of greater internal democracy and pluralism. In the final pages of his autobiographical account of his experiences as a PCF permanent, Antoine Spire illustrated this new sense of confidence which characterized the démarche of critical intellectuals by noting that, while previous generations of rebels had been forced out of the organization, he had every hope that his generation would successfully lead the struggle for greater diversity in the PCF from within.46 Pessimism of the intellect

None the less, there was an interesting tension between the confidence displayed by critical intellectuals in their diagnosis of the particular problems faced by the PCF after 1978, and a deeper strain of pessimism over the more general problem of the nature and goals of political commitment. These conflicting sentiments were, of course, pitched at different levels, even though there was a sense in which they fed upon one another. In the act of questioning the policies adopted by the party leadership, the intellectual was often led to an enquiry into why these directives had been supported for so long. The derived prognosis would then serve to reinforce the initial belief in the need for new solutions to the party's problems. ‘Optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect’: the Gramscian formula could well be used to describe the quandary of the critical Communist intellectual in his efforts to secure an aggiornamento in party policy after 1978. This situation represented a radical departure from previous norms. The intensity of the commitment of earlier generations of (p.154) PCF intellectuals to the social and political goals of communism was extremely high. Membership of the party was viewed as an affiliation to a transnational system destined to embrace the entire world: this ‘Vision planétaire’47 was an essential component of the intellectual's identification with the PCF. This was undoubtedly linked to the adoption of the Marxist–Leninist (and quasi-Hegelian) conception of history as the progressive but inevitable fulfilment of the goals of humanity. The loyalty of the great mass of intellectuals to their party during the Thorezian era was a function (among other factors) of this fundamental belief.48 Gérard Belloin gave the following description of the significance of his commitment to the party during this period: ‘Le Parti devint toute nôtre vie. Être communiste, c'était avoir une conception du monde dans laquelle tout notre être était impliqué.’49 This scheme of things allowed little room for scepticism and moral relativism: the intellectual's entire system of belief rested upon an absolute and almost metaphysical identification with a faith. This, in a sense, guaranteed the philosophical optimism of the Communist intellectual. The inner recesses of his reason could in no way be troubled by merely contingent occurrences: in any

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective event, French intellectuals of those generations were not especially inclined to secure solid empirical foundations for their axioms. By the mid-1970s, however, the underlying values of the Communist intellectual community were beginning to be eroded. The planetary vision was still there, shorn to a considerable extent of an excessively deterministic belief in the forward march of history towards socialism. The moral absolutism of the earlier generations was beginning to give way to a tempered form of scepticism, derived both from a growing awareness of what ‘socialism’ had entailed for the millions of Soviet citizens who perished under Stalinist tyranny, and a decline in the intellectual hegemony of Marxian ideas and concepts in France. These occurrences will be the subject of more extensive treatment at a later stage. It should simply be noted that they resulted in a progressive reconsideration, by party intellectuals, of the goal-directed moral and political philosophy which had traditionally underpinned their allegiance (p.155) to the PCF since the postwar era. One of the immediate consequences of this process of re-evaluation was an attempt to create a greater distance between the subject and object of political commitment, and effectively redefine the intellectual's conception of political activity by replacing dogma with critical rationality. This strain of pessimism ultimately destroyed the foundations of the system of belief which had for so long provided Communist intellectuals with a secure interpretative grid for making sense of the world. In extreme cases, this took the form of considering total withdrawal from the world of politics. Maurice Goldring, an academic at the University of Paris who also wrote for the party journal FranceNouvelle, thus expressed a view which would have elicited a howl of disapproval from earlier generations of party intellectuals: ‘On peut vivre sans faire de politique.’50 The PCF leadership's conceptions of crisis management

A comparison between the crisis of 1978–80 and previous intra-party conflicts should also consider the contrasting techniques used by the PCF leadership to deal with intellectual rebelliousness. If the final objective of quelling internal dissent remained constant, the methods used to this end showed significant variations over time, and this tended to be closely associated with the party leadership's different assessment of the costs of such an enterprise. This involved finding a sensible balance between, on the one hand, safeguarding the party's internal cohesiveness and, on the other, maintaining its credibility as an organization which celebrated its receptivity to intellectual concerns. It should be noted that the party leadership had a number of available means of securing compliance with its policies. In this context, a central role was played by the system of material exchange between intellectuals and the party. This system was centred upon the tangible rewards which the PCF could confer upon its intellectuals through its patronage of an extremely wide network of party institutions. Developed during the Thorezian era, this system of patronage Page 16 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective acquired extensive national and even international ramifications, and provided the leadership with a means of rewarding intellectuals for their contribution to the (p.156) diffusion of party discourse. There were, obviously, great differences in the scope and magnitude of these rewards, variations which were primarily a function of the recipient's position within the structure of the party appareil. An important member of the inner circle, such as a permanent, could be provided with an opportunity to exercise his talents by occupying a position of high authority in an ancillary organization of the party. An example of this was the appointment of party philosopher Lucien Sève, glowingly described by Antoine Spire as ‘incontestablement l'un des plus grands, sinon le plus grand intellectuel du P.C.F.’,51 as the director of the Éditions Sociales in 1970. But if only intellectuals who served as permanents tended to benefit from honours of this nature, a much more common type of reward was to enable party intellectuals to obtain a wider circulation of their works through the party's publishing and distribution networks. The PCF's press and publishing agencies, therefore, served as a means of access to an audience far broader than many intellectuals could have expected to reach through a maison d'édition bourgeoise. lt should be noted, however, that such a system of rewards contained an in-built tendency to generate attitudes of dependence. The PCF plainly expected, in exchange for its generosity, a relatively strict adherence of these intellectuals to la ligne générale du parti. An intellectual who benefited from privileged access to the party readership, for instance, was fully expected to adopt a ‘responsible’ attitude towards party policy, and, if necessary, to defend it against internal and external criticism. This was precisely the point at which tensions could arise in this system of material exchange, and these strains can be immediately linked to the question initially outlined in this section: the resources available to the party leadership to generate compliance with its policies. In periods of intra-party conflict, intellectuals in the appareil were (p.157) often made to occupy the first line of defence, writing articles in support of the current party line, or allowing their names to be included in officially sponsored petitions endorsing prevailing policies.52 From this perspective, it is important to note that the party's system of rewards frequently enabled it to secure the support of certain intellectuals for this type of activity, arguably to a large extent by virtue of their dependence on the party organization. The most obvious group on which the party could exercise this type of hold consisted of those intellectuels d'origine ouvrière who, as remarked earlier,53 were trained by the party before occupying positions of responsibility in the appareil. This type of intellectual, whose social and political status was entirely dependent upon the munificence of the party, was in a far more precarious position to resist official injunctions to support party policy than his colleague who belonged only to the outer circle of party intellectuals, and who was at least materially and financially independent of the organization. Page 17 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective During earlier intra-party conflicts the level of internal cohesiveness was such that official pressure on intellectuals of the inner circle to defend the views of the leadership was not even required. Most of the intellectuels de parti responded to internal, external, and (often) imaginary threats to the party's integrity in an exemplary fashion. Those rare members of the appareil who attempted to swim against the tide were summarily dealt with. The fate of dissident party journalist Paul Noirot in 1968–9 was, from this point of view, characteristic.54 In extreme cases, however, the threat of depriving this type of intellectual of his means of subsistence could prove to be extremely effective. Yet, in the crisis of 1978–80, an unprecedentedly large number of intellectuels de parti consistently refused to follow the party line, despite the fact that the PCF had the effective means of punishing such acts of insubordination. Thus, some of the party journalists who expressed critical views in France-Nouvelle and La Nouvelle Critique were quietly put on the sidelines when these two journals (p. 158) merged in 1980 under the new title of Révolution.55 This purge was quite systematically orchestrated and executed, and a number of leading intellectuals found that their services were no longer required by party organizations with which they had, until then, been collaborating. Thus, in mid-1980 Jean Ellenstein announced that the Éditions Sociales had sacked him as co-ordinator of a collective Histoire de la France contemporaine which had been in preparation for a number of years.56 If this system of incentives was used with some consistency (but also variable results) by the party leadership as a method of bringing recalcitrant intellectuals into step since the Liberation, the use of other methods of crisis management showed significant modifications over time. The terroristic approach which, as noted, largely prevailed under the Thorezian leadership consisted in treating rebellious intellectuals as pestiférés who were entirely unworthy of social intercourse. The inevitable expulsion of such individuals from the party was likened to the necessary removal of a tumour from a healthy organism, invariably accompanied by an attempt to blacken the reputation of the offender. When, in early 1956, party intellectual Pierre Hervé produced a work which criticized the PCF's current interpretation of Marxist theory, he was not only summarily expelled but also, somewhat excessively, accused by L'Humanité of collusion with American intelligence services.57 During the intra-party conflict of 1978–80, however, these crude methods were far less in evidence than in earlier crises. As mentioned, the party leadership found it increasingly difficult to isolate the growing wave of heretical intellectuals with the same ruthless efficiency shown by its Thorezian forebears. It is plain that this technique would have been far less useful in putting down a rebellion which had assumed such proportions. The same numerical argument was also, in all probability, a decisive factor in the leadership's announcement, during the early stages of the 1978–80 crisis, that it would not have recourse to expulsion as a means of dealing with criticisms articulated by the rebellious Page 18 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective intellectuals. Although it is difficult to evaluate the sincerity of this statement of principle, it cannot be overlooked that this (p.159) apparently decisive departure from previous norms was, in practice, short-lived. As from mid-1980, a number of ‘ringleaders’ of the group of critical intellectuals were thrown out of the party. This operation of nettoyage, however, was presented in such a way as not formally to contradict the leadership's previously expressed intention to tolerate critical intellectual activity. Hence the introduction of the laconic phrase, ‘se placer soi-même hors du parti’, to denote the old practice of excommunication.58 Finally, it is worth noting that the practical manifestations of the leadership's receptivity to the criticism levelled by intellectuals varied from one intra-party conflict to another. It has already been noted that the Thorezian leadership tended to treat opposition to party policy as a crime de lèse-majesté. Although the PCF under Waldeck Rochet showed some flexibility in its dealings with internal opposition in accepting, for example, to meet the thirty-six signatories of a petition59 deploring the party's attitude towards the student movement in 1968, there was no hint that this represented a legitimation of the principle of critical activity inside the PCF. At a special session of the Central Committee at Argenteuil in March 1966, the post-Thorezian leadership had tentatively attempted to encourage greater intellectual participation in the elaboration of party policy, and had also emphasized the importance of abandoning the old practice of direct political intervention in scientific and artistic activity. But the possibility of a remise en cause of party policy by intellectuals was decisively rejected.60 From this perspective, there were elements of both continuity and change in the party leadership's approach to the crisis of 1978–80. The continuity may be described, in broad terms, as one of substance: the leadership gave few serious indications, in (p.160) practice, of a desire to compromise with the essence of the arguments put forward by critical intellectuals. As will be demonstrated later, the PCF opposed a categorical fin de non-recevoir to the issues raised by its critics on such fundamental issues as internal party democracy, alliance strategies on the Left, and relations with the international communist movement. The persistence with which the leadership displayed an uncompromising attitude towards the cardinal arguments of the intellectuals was somewhat softened, in its effects, by what may be termed a modification of form: a readiness to acknowledge the existence of problems in the party, and a willingness to organize discussions to seek solutions to these difficulties. This disposition undoubtedly underlay the organization of the meeting between 400 party intellectuals and several members of the Bureau Politique at Vitry in December 1978, as well as the convocation of a Conseil National on intellectual and cultural issues at Bobigny in February 1980. The party leadership underlined the extent to which this type of consultation constituted a formal innovation in a declaration published in L'Humanité.61 Another formal Page 19 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective modification introduced was the opening of a tribune de discussion in the party press several weeks before the Bobigny meeting.62 It may be concluded that, during the intra-party conflict of 1978–80, the PCF leadership sought to modify the balance struck by its predecessors between preserving the internal cohesion of the organization and demonstrating some receptivity to the claims made by its critics. This adjustment led to the introduction of some methods of crisis management which had not been tried before, and this constituted another distinctive facet of this conflict. Contrasting sources of intellectual opposition

Another interesting contrast between the 1978–80 crisis and earlier intra-party conflicts lay in the former's relatively broader (p.161) sources of intellectual discontent. This represented a widening of the scope of intellectual criticism in the PCF, and ensured that the later crisis was far more complex in character than previous manifestations of its kind. Indeed, the principal sources of the intra-party conflicts of 1949, 1956, and 1968 could be identified, at a certain level of generality, as issues and problems external to the French political system. It could be argued that the PCF was only indirectly implicated in these events, essentially as a function of the party's strong links with the international communist movement. The small band of intellectuals who rebelled against party policy, both at the height of the Cold War and as a consequence of the leadership's lukewarm response to Soviet deStalinization, directed the thrust of their criticism towards the nature of the PCF's traditional identification with the international communist movement. Again, after 1968, the most determined expression of opposition to party policy, both in terms of the nature of the criticisms articulated and the extent to which their proponents were prepared to defend their arguments, came from intellectuals who were dissatisfied with the position adopted by the PCF in the wake of the Czechoslovak crisis. This is not to say, however, that internal and domestic political concerns were of no significance in these crises. For example, arguments may be found expressing the intellectuals' discomfort with the Stalinist mores of the party organization. But it should be noted that, in a significant proportion of cases, these arguments were propounded ex post facto, in memoirs and essays written many years after the occurrence of the events. Thus, they should not be considered as an integral part of the criticisms publicly voiced during these intra-party disputes. The intra-party crisis of 1968–70 constituted, in some respects, a departure from previous norms, in that the party's domestic policy was the object of some criticism. As already noted, the PCF's lack of warmth towards the student movement occasioned a number of critical responses from intellectual quarters. It would also be fair to state that most of the arguments expressing the intellectuals' dissatisfaction with the internal organization of the party were Page 20 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective made in a public form. However, the thrust of the opposition to the policies of the leadership was primarily directed towards the ramifications of the Czechoslovak issue. Whilst differences over the significance of the events of May 1968 were (p.162) soon papered over, the disagreements which followed the Soviet invasion of a socialist country fuelled a protracted intra-party dispute which led, as has been seen, to a number of ruptures avec le parti. If the post-1968 crisis showed some indication that intra-party disputes were assuming a progressively more complex character, the development of the 1978– 80 crisis clearly confirmed this trend. Unlike most previous cases, this dispute between the party leadership and its intellectuals was triggered by an event internal to the French political system: the defeat of the Union de la Gauche in the legislative elections of March 1978. From this starting-point, however, the debates and arguments extended into a general critique of the PCF's domestic and external policy, as well as its practical conception of the role of intellectuals in the party. The main reason for this extension lay in the intellectuals' belief that the fundamental orientation of party policy had been substantially altered by the leadership without any form of consultation with party members. This belief in the radical realignment of party policy occasioned an equally radical reassessment by the intellectuals of the general course taken by the PCF over the previous decades. From this protracted reconsideration emerged a whole series of critical issues, which included the political strategy pursued by the party since the early 1970s, but also more general problems, such as the state of internal party democracy and the PCF's positive evaluation of Soviet-style socialism. The effective causes of the intra-party dispute of 1978–80, therefore, were much wider than those of previous crises. This directly contributed to both a greater magnitude of intellectual involvement and a broader proliferation of conflicting issues, thus increasing the problems faced by the leadership in its attempts to restore the status quo ante bellum. The consequences of intra-party disputes

Finally, there were striking contrasts between the short- and middle-term consequences of the 1978–80 crisis and the effects of earlier intra-party disputes. The crises which involved previous generations of Communist intellectuals may have had a number of adverse repercussions on the internal cohesiveness of the organization, the electoral performance of the party, and the general level (p.163) of intellectual identification with the PCF. None of these negative consequences, however, proved to be irreversible. What stood out as the most remarkable feature of the 1978–80 crisis, from this point of view, was its finality. The intra-party dispute inflicted so much damage upon the PCF that a return to the initial level of equilibrium proved impossible.

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective The relatively small scale assumed by earlier internal conflicts ensured that the injuries suffered by the party organization were minimal. The crises of 1948–9 and 1956–8 had little impact on the public positions adopted by the hommes d'appareil. Even the internal strife which followed the events of 1968 was not accompanied by widespread disagreements with the party line inside the permanent organization of the party. The post-1978 crisis, however, struck at the very heart of the party apparatus, and initiated a process which led to departures not only of intellectual but also, to the leadership's dismay, workingclass members of the permanent organization.63 This constituted an entirely new development in the history of the party appareil, the defining characteristic of which had traditionally been the indeflectable attachment of its members to the party line. It is important to note, therefore, that the post-1978 crisis developed into a more general and profound confrontation between the party leadership and its hommes de marbre, the effects of which were clearly identifiable throughout the 1980s.64 Furthermore, it should be pointed out that the purely electoral impact of previous intra-party disputes was by no means as clearly significant as the repercussions of the post-1978 crisis on the overall level of support for the PCF. Although a rigorous explanation of the sources of volatile behaviour in the Communist electorate is beyond reach, it is entirely plausible to suggest that the internal conflicts of 1948–9 and 1968–9 had a relatively insignificant (p.164) impact on the performance of the party in national elections. The PCF's vote in the legislative elections of 1951 and the presidential elections of 1969, although by no means spectacular, held up fairly well on the whole, and, in the latter case, even represented a slight progression of the party from its previous positions.65 None the less, there were moments when a relative electoral set-back for the PCF coincided with the development of critical intellectual activity within the party. But it would be unwise to establish a direct causal connection between these two phenomena. As previously argued, the collapse in support for the PCF in the parliamentary elections of 1958 should be attributed primarily to the national conjoncture politique, of the early days of the Gaullist Republic. Similarly, the drubbing taken by the PCF in the élections de la peur of 1968 was essentially a function of the astuteness with which the Gaullists succeeded in exploiting the events of May at the expense of the French Left. Since 1978, however, the PCF has been sliding down what appears to most commentators to be an irreversible path of electoral decline.66 It was undoubtedly no accident that this process was accompanied by a severe erosion in the level of intellectual support for the party, even though the identification of effective causal connections between these two phenomena should be delayed until the complex ramifications of each have been explored in more detail. Furthermore, the post-1978 intra-party dispute achieved the unprecedented result of almost totally shattering the level of intellectual identification with the PCF, in stark contrast with earlier crises, whose adverse impact on the political Page 22 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective commitment of Communist intellectuals (and the wider community of French intellectuals) never assumed quite such calamitous proportions. As implied by the earlier outline of successive cohorts of intellectuals, the PCF was always able to attract the support of a sizeable section of the French intellectual community since the Liberation. This magnetic capacity transcended the party's periodic difficulties with some of its critics, thus ensuring a relatively smooth transmission (p.165) of the PCF's appeal from one generation of intellectuals to the next. Even with allowances for the laissés pour compte of each cohort, it is obvious that every decade brought a fresh wave of intellectual adhesions to the party. The losses suffered at the end of the PCF's phase of collaboration with other parties after 1947 were partly compensated for by the hardened and zealous intellectual recruits of the Cold War. Similarly, the defections witnessed after 1956 should be set against the movement of intellectual adhesion to the party in the 1960s. It would also be correct to state that the intellectual support which drifted away from the PCF during the crisis of 1968–9 was largely offset by the arrival of the generation of the Programme commun. It is precisely this renewal of intellectual identification with the PCF from one generation to the next which was decisively aborted as a result of the intra-party dispute of 1978–80, and this, in a sense, constituted the most distinctive feature of this crisis. The heavy losses sustained by the party after 1980 were not replaced by the recruitment of a fresh generation of Communist intellectuals. As noted in the Introduction, an immediate sign of the difficulties experienced by the PCF in this field was the complete absence of reference to the traditional notion of the alliance of the working class with the travailleurs intellectuels at the party's twenty-fifth Congress67 in February 1985. Almost two decades earlier, the Central Committee resolution which followed the meeting at Argenteuil had stated: ‘C'est une tâche essentielle du Parti tout entier d'aider tous les intellectuels à prendre, aux côtés de la classe ouvrière, leur part dans la construction de l'avenir.’68 This message was subsequently repeated ad nauseam in successive Congress and Central Committee resolutions. By the mid-1980s, however, the party leadership seemed to have realized the complete futility of appealing to a social stratum which showed no signs of identifying with the party in anything like the spirit of preceding generations of intellectuals, for whom Marxism and Communism had constituted what Sartre described as an horizon indépassable. This absence of regeneration of the traditional pattern of identification (p.166) with Communism coincided with a broader processs of realignment within the community of intellectuels de gauche in France. This wider community began to enter a phase of pessimism in the late 1970s, which often involved a searching evaluation and reassessment of its fundamental beliefs and values: this process was aptly described as the ‘ébranlement des certitudes initiales’.69 This took many forms, of which the most remarkable was a decline in the traditional type of intellectual commitment to left-wing politics. After the election of François Page 23 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective Mitterrand to the presidency in 1981, and the brief flurry of intellectual enthusiasm during the état de grâce, the intellectuels de gauche lapsed into a long phase of quiescence, establishing a much greater critical distance from ‘their’ government. This attitude stood in stark contrast to the firmness with which previous generations of progressive intellectuals had supported the earlier (and relatively short-lived) united left-wing experiment in power in 1936. This relative withdrawal, which Le Monde described as ‘le silence des intellectuels de gauche’,70 was part of a wider process of political and ideological realignment whose effects were more clearly perceptible in the late 1980s. But it is sufficient to notice the striking parallels between the lack of regeneration of the established pattern of identification with Communism and the redefinition of the traditional assumptions and values which underlay the engagement of the intellectuel de gauche. These processes shared a number of common features: both began to assume significant dimensions in the late 1970s; both involved a deep examination of the foundations of traditionally held beliefs, and both resulted in a radical re-evaluation of standard forms of political commitment.71 Although firm evidence will not be provided, at any stage of this (p.167) argument, to establish effective causal connections between the two phenomena, it is indisputable that the intra-party dispute of 1978–80, which witnessed the terminal phase of a type of commitment which had guided several preceding generations of Communist intellectuals, was also part of a wider evolution of the attitudes and beliefs of radical intellectuals in France since the early 1970s. This historical assessment of intra-party disputes leads to the inevitable conclusion that, despite a number of formal similarities, there were significant and substantive differences between the crisis of 1978–80 and earlier instances of conflict between party intellectuals and the PCF leadership. The post-1978 dispute was clearly far more complex and intricate than any of its precedents: the number of intellectuals involved was far greater; the attitudes displayed by the critics were distinctively different; the methods of crisis management adopted by the party leadership were modified, with some new techniques being tried out; the roots of the problems were much more diverse; and, finally, the consequences of the crisis were immensely more dramatic. Thus, the traditional and almost cyclical alternation between periods of harmony and phases of conflict between Communist intellectuals and the party leadership was decisively arrested by the PCF's failure to rejuvenate its intellectual support in the génération Mitterrand of the 1980s. Notes:

(1) The newly formed organization renamed itself the Parti Communiste Français as from January 1922. See Edward Mortimer, The Rise of the French Communist Party 1920–1947 (London: Faber, 1984), 68. On the historic split between Page 24 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective Socialist and Communist wings of the French labour movement, see Annie Kriegel, Aux origines du communisme français, 2 vols. (Paris: Mouton, 1964); and Le Congrès de Tours (Paris: Julliard, 1964). (2) For the evolution of the socio-professional origins of the PCF leadership between 1920 and 1936, see Table 1 in Bernard Pudal, Prendre parti: Pour une sociologie historique du PCF (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989), 42. (3) Quoted in Philippe Bernard, La Fin d'un monde 1914–1929 (Paris: Seuil, 1975), 219. (4) See Georges Lefranc, Jaurès et le socialisme des intellectuels (Paris: Montaigne, 1968). An updated version of Lefranc's argument would view Jaurès as the originator of an intellectual tradition which included not only men like Blum, Mollet, and Mendès-France, but also contemporary socialist figures such as François Mitterrand and Michel Rocard. See Jean Daniel, Les Religions d'un président: Regards sur les aventures du Mitterrandisme (Paris: Grasset, 1988), 43–57. (5) Annie Kriegel, Le Pain et les roses (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 248. (6) e.g. his savage indictment of the proceedings at the 14th Congress of the PCF at Le Havre: ‘Nous n'avons vu qu'entêtement dans l'erreur, persévérance dans le mensonge, absurde prétention de ne s'être jamais trompé, bref, chez des pontifs plus que jamais pontiflants, une incapacité sénile à se déprendre de soi-même …’. See Aimé Césaire, Lettre à Maurice Thorez (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1957), 7. (7) Ibid. 16. (8) In Le Nouvel Observateur, 12–18 Jan. 1981. (9) See e.g. Annie Kriegel, ‘Le concept politique de génération: Apogée et déclin’, Commentaire, Autumn 1979; Raoul Girardet, ‘Du concept de génération à la notion de contemporanéité’, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, Apr.– June 1983; and Jean-François Sirinelli, ‘Effets d'âge et phénomènes de génération dans le milieu intellectuel français’, Cahiers de l'lnstitut d'Histoire du Temps Présent, 6 (Nov. 1987). (10) For a perceptive account of the intellectual climate during this period, see Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Paris-Montpellier: PC-PSU 1945–1963 (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), 25–32. (11) See Edgar Morin, Autocritique (Paris: Seuil, 1975).

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective (12) See Branko Lazitch, Le Rapport Krouchtchev et son histoire (Paris: Seuil, 1976), 97. (13) Le Roy Ladurie, Paris-Montpellier, 46. (14) Ibid. 171. (15) See David Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals (London: André Deutsch, 1964), 215–34. (16) In its edition of 26 May 1968. (17) In the words of Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals, 268. (18) This position was outlined in Le Grand Tournant du socialisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1969). (19) This episode was fully recounted in Paul Noirot, La Mémoire ouverte (Paris: Stock, 1976), 310–15. (20) In Dec. 1947 it was claimed that party membership amounted to 907,785; the corresponding figure in May 1954 was 506,250. See the table in Annie Kriegel, Les Communistes français (Paris: Seuil, 1968), 31. (21) At the 24th PCF Congress in Feb. 1982 the party claimed a total membership of 710,138; at the 26th Congress in Dec. 1987 the figure was alleged to have fallen to approximately 600,000. See the report of the Commission de la résolution, in L'Humanité, 7 Dec. 1987. (22) See n. 16. (23) In Waldeck Rochet's report to the Central Committee meeting at Nanterre in July 1968, in Cahiers du communisme, Nov.–Dec. 1968, pp. 334–5; emphasis added. (24) Morin, Autocritique, 170. (25) André Wurmser, Fidélement vôtre: Soixante ans de vie politique et Littéraire (Paris: Grasset, 1979), 359. (26) The motion was published in Le Figaro, 23 Nov. 1956. See Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals, 228. (27) See e.g. Victor Leduc, Les Tribulations d'un idéologue (Paris: Syros, 1985). (28) Quoted in Hélène Parmelin, Libérez les communistes! (Paris: Stock-Opéra Mundi, 1979), 249.

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective (29) It must be said that few French intellectuals have followed as turbulent an itinerary as Garaudy since the late 1960s. After being expelled from the party in 1970, he went through a spell of gauchisme, before converting to Catholicism, effectively practising the synthesis of Marxism and Christianity he had so ardently preached in the early 1960s. Towards the late 1970s he became intensely preoccupied with environmental issues, and stood in the 1981 presidential elections on an ecological platform. This spell lasted for barely 18 months: in late 1982 he announced his conversion to Islam. (30) The PCF expressed its ‘surprise et réprobation’ at the Warsaw Pact invasion. See the declaration of the Bureau Politique on 21 Aug. 1968, in Cahiers du communisme, Aug.–Sept. 1968, pp. 26–7. (31) Jean Rony, Trente ans de parti: Un communiste s'interroge (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1978), 114. (32) See Le Nouvel Observateur, 29 Dec. 1980–4 Jan. 1981. (33) Ellenstein's three articles were published in the issues of 13, 14, and 15 Apr.; Althusser's contributions appeared ten days later, on 25, 26, 27, and 28 Apr. (34) See L'Humanité, 11 Dec. 1978. (35) On the incidence of anti-intellectualism in the PCF, see Le Roy Ladurie, Paris-Montpellier, 153–4. (36) Pierre Naville, ‘L'Intellectuel communiste’, in La Révolution et les intellectuels (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 156. (37) Morin, Autocritique, 157; emphasis added. (38) See L'Humanité, 3 Apr. 1979; emphasis added. (39) Gérard Belloin, Nos rêves camarades: Infi(r)me(s) mémoires (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 183. (40) Jorge Semprun, Autobiographie de Federico Sanchez (Paris: Seuil, 1977), 306. (41) A notable exception was the party intellectual Jean Baby, whose Critique de base (Paris: Maspéro, 1960) constituted a scathing attack on the sclerosis of the party organization. (42) e.g. Art. 8 of these new rules declared unambiguously: ‘Les décisions sont prises à la majorité et concernent chaque adhérent. Elles sont appliquées par tous. C'est ainsi que l'élaboration collective donne lieu à une décision prise collectivement et appliquée elle-même collectivement.’ See ‘Statuts du Parti Page 27 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective Communiste Français’, Cahiers du communisme, June–July 1979, pp. 409–10; emphasis added. (43) Parmelin, Libérez les communistes!, 121. (44) Le Roy Ladurie, Paris-Montpellier, 110. (45) Probably the most famous example of such desertion was the fate suffered by the Czech Communist Arthur London, who had been an active member of the French Resistance and was married to the sister of Raymond Guyot, a prominent PCF official in the Thorezian era. In 1952 London was sentenced to several years' imprisonment on trumped-up charges during the show trials which led to the execution of several prominent leaders of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. He was immediately denounced by his entire family, and Guyot himself publicly joined in the slanderous campaign. London was later released, and published a striking account of his experiences in L'Aveu (Paris: Hachette, 1977). (46) Antoine Spire, Profession permanent (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 241. (47) Kriegel, Aux origines du communisme français, ii. 874. (48) George Lichtheim, Marxism in Modern France (New York: Columbia, 1966), 74. (49) Belloin, Nos rêves camarades, 56. (50) Maurice Goldring, L'Accident: Un intellectuel communiste dans le débat du printemps 1978 (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1978), 54. (51) Spire, Profession permanent, 79. With the elimination of Roger Garaudy and the relative marginalization of Louis Althusser within the parry, Séve gradually emerged as the PCF's ‘official’ philosopher. Hence the praise lavished upon his Marxisme et théorie de la personalité (1969) and Introduction à la philosophie marxiste (1980), both of which revealed strong neo-Kantian undercurrents. In the 1980s, however, Sève (like most intellectuals who remained in the PCF) became increasingly disillusioned with party policy. He lost control of the Éditions Sociales in 1982, and subsequently even found his philosophical views assailed in L'Humanité. He thus experienced all the acute discomforts of being treated as a means rather than as an end-in-himself. (52) e.g. the hostile reactions provoked by the official announcement of Georges Marchais's candidature for the presidency in early 1980 were countered by a long petition of support, signed by several hundred party militants and personalities, including a significant number of leading intellectuels de parti.See L'Humanité, 13 Mar. 1980. (53) See Ch. 3. Page 28 of 30

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective (54) See n. 19. (55) The first issue of which appeared on 7 Mar. 1980. (56) For further details, see interview of Ellenstein in Le Monde, 16 June 1980. (57) In an article by Guy Besse in L'Humanité, 25 Jan. 1956. (58) This expression was used, for example, by the PCF comité d'arrondissement which decreed the expulsion of Jean Ellenstein in Oct. 1980. See L'Humanite, 23 Oct. 1980. (59) See n. 16. (60) In his intervention at the meeting, party leader Waldeck Rochet pointed out that discussions of theoretical problems were entirely acceptable as long as they did not affect party positions: ‘il faut voir clairement ce qu'il y a lieu de faire lorsque, à partir de telles discussions, on arrive à des positions qui affectent directement la ligne politique du parti … Il est en effet un principe élémentaire sans lequel un parti révolutionnaire ne peut exister: c'est qu'aprés qu'a eu lieu la discussion … [les] décisions sont appliquables par tous, y compris par ceux qui ont voté contre.’ See Cahiers du communisme, May–June 1966, p. 322. (61) ‘C'est la première fois qu'en dehors de la préparation d'un Congrès une telle méthode d'élaboration collective va être utilisée. Il s'agit à partir de l'orientation démocratiquement définie par le XXIII e Congrès d'apporter aux grands problèmes de la culture et de notre activité parmi les intellectuels, les réponses spécifiques qui s'imposent.’ See L'Humanité, 11 Dec. 1979. (62) The tribune was opened in L'Humanité on 18 Dec. 1979, and in the Central Committee weekly France-Nouvelle a few days later. (63) For a series of interviews with a number of intellectuals and working-class party members who were involved, after 1978, in this process of disaffiliation, see Michel Cardoze, Nouveau voyage à l'intérieur du Parti Communiste Français (Paris: Fayard, 1986). (64) As mentioned in the Introduction, the disintegration of the traditional internal consensus within the upper reaches of the PCF was both a further cause and an immediate effect of the party's accelerated institutional decline after 1981. This internal conflict was reflected in the expression of public opposition to the Marchais leadership by important figures in the Communist nomenklatura. For an example of such dissidence notabiliaire, see Marcel Rosette, ‘Le Débat contre … l'anti-communisme’, Le Monde, 10 Feb. 1990.

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The Crisis of 1978–1980 in Historical Perspective (65) The basic point made in this general comparison should be granted, even though the propriety of comparing the results of two very different types of electoral contest, the legislative and the presidential, is rather questionable. (66) For a broader perspective on the electoral problems of French Communism, see Jean Ranger: ‘Le Déclin du Parti Communiste Français’, Revue française de science politique, 36–1 (Feb. 1986). (67) See Georges Marchais's report to the Central Committee, in L'Humanité, 7 Feb. 1985. (68) Resolution of the Central Committee at Argenteuil, 13 Mar. 1966; in Cahiers du communisme, May–June 1966, p. 280. (69) Pascal Ory and Jean-François Sirinelli, Les Intellectuels en France, de l'affaire Dreyfus à nos jours (Paris: Armand Colin, 1986), 224. (70) See the article by Philippe Boggio on 27 July 1983. This theme was taken up and further dissected by the national press in the following months, and periodically continued to provide a point de réflexion in magazines and journals thereafter. See Daniel Lindenberg: ‘Y a-t-il encore des intellectuels de gauche?’, Le Magazine littéraire, 248 (Dec. 1987), 27–9. (71) It is not quite clear, however, that they shared the same starting-point. The direct origins of the crisis of commitment of the Communist intellectuals was, as noted, the defeat of the Left in the legislative elections of Mar. 1978. The malaise of the intellectuels de gauche was only indirectly related to the latter event: its genesis should be traced in the complex intellectual evolution of the deuxième gauche since the late 1960s.

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class Sudhir Hazareesingh

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the nature and limitations of intellectual subjectivism in the French Communist Party (PCF) after the March 1978 elections. It evaluates the extent to which the intellectual contestaires were prepared to question the dominant socio-political values of the Communist counter-community. It identifies the central tension between the intellectuals' collective demand for an enhancement of their status in the party and the continuing attachment to the political and social virtues embodied in the French working class. The way intraparty conflicts were resolved clearly indicates that there were distinct limits to the self-assertion of the intellectuals. Keywords:   intellectuals, subjectivism, intra-party conflict, self-assertion, French Communist Party

‘BEAUCOUP d'intellectuels, mais pas seulement des intellectuels, n'acceptent plus qu'on les tienne par la main … De plus en plus de communistes veulent dire je avant de dire nous, et refusent des modalités de fonctionnement qu'eux ou d'autres ont acceptées pendant des années …’. This statement by Antoine Spire1 in 1980 succinctly captured one of the central aspirations of the rebellious intellectuals: the rediscovery of their social and political individuality, too long suppressed by a hierarchical tradition which enabled the centralized authority of the party leadership to override the beliefs of individual party members. This emphasis on the intellectuals' subjectivity represented, as already noted in Chapter 4, a relatively new phenomenon in the internal mores of the PCF. An attempt will be made, in this chapter, to outline the nature and limitations of this Page 1 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class form of subjectivism after 1978, and thus to assess the extent to which the intellectual contestataires were prepared seriously to question the dominant socio-political values of the Communist counter-community. From this perspective, a central tension will be identified between the intellectuals' collective demand for an enhancement of their status in the party, and their continuing attachment to the social and political virtues embodied in the French working class. The different ways in which these conflicts were resolved suggested that, in the final analysis, there were distinct limits to the selfassertion of the intellectuals.

(p.169) The Social Universe of the Communist Intellectual The standard demand of the critics for greater involvement in the internal life of the PCF naturally raised the question of the extent to which the intellectuals' conscious assertion of their social identity represented a challenge to the dominant social group in the counter-community: the proletariat. The strictly ‘social’ dimension of group awareness could not be directly deduced from the self-referential tendencies of the intellectuals. When, for instance, Gerard Belloin wrote that ‘il y a un immense besoin des intellectuels communistes d'apporter leur contribution d'intellectuels communistes à la politique et aux politiques’,2 this statement could be interpreted as an expression of three separate conceptions of group identity. First, this view could be taken to represent the intellectual's conception of vertical power relationships within the party's organizational structure: the referential group, from this angle, was much less a social category than an institutional one. In other words, this view could represent the intellectual primarily as a member of the party rank and file, in contrast to the hierarchy of the PCF (the ‘politiques’). Enhancing the intellectua's input would become essentially an issue of incorporating la base du parti into the collective decisionmaking process of the PCF. Secondly, Belloin's proposition was compatible with a definition of the referential group as a collective of party members united by a common intellectual approach: from this perspective, its defining characteristic was not a distinct location within the PCF's organizational structure, but the nature of the political claims put forward by its members. The intellectual's greater contribution would become an essentially ideological question, in contrast to the institutional dimension previously outlined. Finally, the statement could be taken as an expression of the common socio-professional properties of Communist intellectuals as a group within the counter-community. Only from this angle would the referential group be defined primarily by its occupational characteristics: (p.170) the question of the greater contribution of the intellectual would become a matter of modifying the distribution of roles between the different social components of the PCF.

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class If the latter dimension of group identity was privileged, the natural implication was that the intellectual's representation of other social groups within the PCF might have been adversely affected by the affirmation of his subjectivity as a social and political agent. This hypothesis could be tested only by examining the place attributed to the proletariat in the intellectual's Weltanschauung. In the sections which follow, an attempt will be made to establish the precise contours of this social class from the perspective of the Communist intellectual, so as to determine whether this representation was influenced in any way by his challenge to the PCF leadership after March 1978. The intellectual's conception of the proletariat

The central role of the proletariat in the nature and historical development of the Communist movement in France requires little elaboration. As noted in Chapter 2, the intellectual's fascination with the working class traditionally constituted one of the fundamental reasons for his affiliation to the PCF. In the Stalinist era it would not be an exaggeration to claim that the working class provided the standards which made the party intellectual's universe intelligible. The national political distinctiveness of the PCF rested almost exclusively upon its identification with the French proletariat. The party defined itself as le grand parti de la classe ouvrière, its mass membership and electorate were predominantly proletarian, as were its leadership and permanent cadres. For the intellectual, the proletariat (and its political vanguard, the PCF) was not only the principal agent of political change, but also the ultimate object of social interaction, and even constituted an absolute yardstick of morally acceptable behaviour. The working class, accordingly, was firmly embedded in the intellectual landscape of the French Left: membership of the PCF was inescapably intertwined with an abiding sense of commitment to the political and cultural values this social category was deemed to represent. Before assessing whether the Communist intellectual's representation of the proletariat had changed significantly in the late (p.171) 1970s, however, it should be noted that the centrality of the social, moral, and political role of the working class had ceased to be an article of faith of the non-communist Left from at least the s. This decline in the eschatological status of the proletariat within broader intellectual circles of the French Left was a function of significant developments in five areas: the evolving relationship between the PCF and the working class; the problematic nature of defining the contours of the proletariat, and increasing doubts as to its revolutionary attributes; the emergence of different agents of social change; and, finally, the appearance of alternative ethical standards of individual action. The French Left and the proletariat

In the decade following the Liberation the fascination of the French Left for the working class initially rested on three incontrovertible (but none the less contingent) factors: the overwhelming identification of the French proletariat Page 3 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class with the Communist Party,3 the hegemonic position achieved by the PCF within the Left as a whole, and the commanding international position achieved by Stalinist Russia, which served to enhance the prestige of the world's first ‘proletarian’ state. This cult popularized the Promethean figure of the homme nouveau. His virtues were perfectly embodied in André Stil's fictional character Henri, a Communist docker who triumphed over the adversity of his condition by fruitfully assimilating the principles of dialectical materialism.4 Two decades after the Liberation, however, none of the three conditions mentioned above was as readily observable. The French proletariat now shared its favours with de Gaulle, who was supported by 42 per cent of the working class in the (p.172) 1965 presidential election.5 The non-communist Left was beginning to emerge from the oubliettes de l'histoire, as was illustrated by François Mitterrand's electoral performance in 1965, the harbinger of greater achievements to come. Finally, the prestige of the Soviet system had been severely impaired by the invasion of Hungary in 1956 and increasingly publicized abuses of human rights, which even forced an embarrassed rebuke from L'Humanité6 in 1966. The purely institutional dimension of the French Left's identification with the proletariat, therefore, could no longer be reduced to the comfortable triangular relationship between the working class, the French Communist Party, and the Soviet state. A second problem, equally damaging in its implications for the status of the proletariat in the eyes of the Left, was the question of defining the precise contours of the working class in French society. With the decline in the relative political homogeneity of this social class in the Gaullist era, it became evident that important questions relating to its social uniformity could not be ignored. It was becoming increasingly apparent that the rapid modernization of French society was beginning to fracture the monolithic fabric of the working class. As early as 1955 the liberal sociologist Raymond Aron argued that left-wing intellectuals approached the question from a political rather than sociological angle: if the latter aspect was privileged, he argued, the proletariat should be seen as ‘a category whose centre is clearly defined and its periphery vague’.7 For most of this decade, indeed, the central intellectual concern of the Left remained the question of the political condition of the working class. The specific social and cultural identity of the subject itself was hardly deemed worthy of debate. The categorical pronouncements of Maurice Thorez on the ‘pauperization’ of the working class,8 the revisionist conceptions (p.173) of the Trotskyite Socialisme ou Barbarie group,9 and the existential acrobatics of the Sartrian approach shared little common ground from a political standpoint. Yet, each of these perspectives was informed by the assumption of the proletariat's social uniformity and political cohesiveness. However, this holistic assumption did not survive the cold glare of sociological analysis for very long. In the early 1960s the writings of Gorz, Belleville, and Mallet on the ‘new’ working class10 challenged orthodox Marxian assumptions by insisting on the important sociological implications of technological changes introduced by modern Page 4 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class capitalism. Although the PCF hastened to dismiss this approach, it was interesting to note that the questions it raised began to be indirectly addressed by leading party intellectuals.11 The further development of these arguments in the following two decades almost turned the working class into an objet insaisissable: from Henri Lefebvre's conception of urban alienation12 to the complex stratification schemes favoured in contemporary sociological approaches,13 it became patently clear that few on the Left still considered the working class as an undifferentiated unit of analysis. (p.174) Following directly from the first two problems, the question of the validity of the revolutionary dispositions attributed to the working class also began to capture the intellectual attention of the Left in France. The attribution of such a generic quality to the proletariat operated at two related but separate levels of analysis. At a lower level, it represented an a posteriori claim which could be grounded in empirical observation of the actual political behaviour of the working class. From this perspective, the relatively high level of popular support enjoyed by the PCF throughout the Fourth Republic could be interpreted as confirmation of this revolutionary disposition. At a higher level of analysis, however, this attribution consisted of an a priori claim, which identified intrinsically revolutionary properties in the very nature of the proletariat. As Marx put it rather bluntly in the Holy Family: ‘It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with its being, it will historically be compelled to do.’14 The reassuring schematism of early Cold War politics in France enabled most left-wing intellectuals to operate at both levels simultaneously. When Sartre gave the beleaguered Communists his qualified endorsement in 1952, he could still justify his ralliement in terms of both the actual support given to the PCF by the proletariat, and the inherently spontaneous nature of workers' aspirations for radical social change.15 This lingering belief in the spontaneous revolutionary disposition of the French proletariat was severely jolted by the advent of the Gaullist Republic, and the emergence of a loyal working-class following for the connétable. De Gaulle's overwhelming popular success in the referendum of November 1958, for example, forced Cornelius Castoriadis and his Socialisme ou Barbarie group to reappraise their assumption of the ‘natural’ revolutionary potential of the working class.16 But the Jacobins of the Left—both inside and outside the PCF— (p.175) continued to pin their hopes on the revolutionary agency of the proletariat, until the events of May 1968 almost totally undermined this vision. What ultimately survived, therefore, of the belief in the revolutionary disposition of the working class was the a priori claim, which fortunately could not be invalidated by the actual political behaviour of the workers in French society.17

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class With the eschatological status of the proletariat thus increasingly impaired, the search for alternative agents of radical change could hardly fail to gather momentum on the rive gauche, at a time when the notion of revolutionary change remained central to the ideology of the French Left. This intellectual expedition took the form of a dual movement along two separate axes, representing a departure from the familiar shores of Europe on the one hand, and the discovery of new forms of revolutionary agency within French society on the other. The inward focus of the French Left on the proletariat after the Liberation was, in an important sense, the combined product of the theoretical premisses of Marxist theory (in its Stalinist form) and the political consequences of the international bipolarity engendered by the Cold War. Europe, as the epitome of advanced monopoly capitalism, was naturally regarded as the fulcrum of universal class conflict by orthodox Marxists in France. For geopolitical rather than theoretical reasons, the vieille canaille was also regarded by Stalinists as the epicentre of the ideological conflict between the ‘two camps’. Since the stage was set within this totality, the dramatis personae could obviously be no other than the workers of Western Europe, as Algerian Communists were sternly reminded after November 1954, when they tentatively sought to engage the attention of their French parti frère.18 The combined effect of de-Stalinization and the ideological thaw between East and West produced a renewed interest in extra-European developments, which in the 1960s seemed to provide an infinitely more fertile and exotic terrain for radical politics than the rather jaded social fabric of Western Europe. The manifesto against the war in Algeria, signed by 121 French intellectuals in September 1960, clearly symbolized this (p.176) shift in the axis of revolutionary concerns.19 As JeanPaul Sartre wrote in his preface to Frantz Fanon's Les Damnés de la terre—in many senses the original manifesto of this new tiers mondisme—‘L'Europe est foutue … elle fait eau de toute part. Que s'est-il done passé? Ceci, tout simplement, que nous étions les sujets de l'Histoire et que nous en sommes à présent les objets.’20 The international causes célèbres of the decade further reflected the growing impact of the developing world on the agenda of radical intellectuals. In this sense, the powerful images of heroism from Havana and Hanoi (and mass delirium from Beijing) indicated that the status of the European worker as an embodiment of the revolutionary idea was under considerable threat. This process was compounded by the emergence of alternative forms of revolutionary agency within French society itself. From this perspective, the Utopian communism of the student movement of May 1968 not only represented the first serious challenge to the institutional hegemony of the PCF over the French Left; in a fundamental sense, the mouvement étudiant represented a new radical alternative to the ‘established’ revolutionary class, which appeared increasingly incapable of resisting the discreet charms of embourgeoisement.21 Page 6 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class The post-industrial flavour of this challenge to working-class supremacy on the Left was undeniable. The underlying thrust of the political propositions put forward by the gauchistes represented a complete rejection of the entire way of life associated with modern capitalism. This reconsideration of the centrality of the capitalist mode of production necessarily entailed a reassessment of the social and political role of its principal agent in society, the industrial proletariat. From this point of view, the events of May 1968 undeniably gave a critical impulsion to the development of a number of ‘new’ social movements in French politics. The political heterogeneity of these movements precluded the establishment of a positive scheme of classification. It was hard to find a common ideological thread in the gender politics of (p.177) the MLF (Mouvement de Libération de la Femme), the ecological principles of René Dumont, and (more recently) the anti-racist platform sponsored by Harlem Désir's SOS Racisme. In a negative sense, however, these divergent approaches at least shared the assumption that class-based issues should no longer determine the intellectual agenda of the Left. The title of the work published by André Gorz in 1980, Adieux au prolétariat, perfectly summarized the alternative sociological dimension favoured by these ‘new’ social movements.22 Ultimately, these different dimensions of the decline in the status of the proletariat severely undermined the capacity of this social class to provide radical intellectuals with a secure foundation for making moral judgements. After the Liberation the moral universe of many French intellectuals was almost exclusively occupied with questions of choice and responsibility. To a considerable extent, this was the political legacy of the civil strife between 1940 and 1944, which had forced intellectuals, like all other social groups, to take their position on either side of the barricades. The survival of the spirit of the Resistance after the end of military hostilities was particularly reflected in the common problematic of the intellectual Left in the post-war era. Both Communism and existentialism (in its Marxist variant) insisted that intellectuals could give meaning to their existence only through political commitment; both doctrines further recognized the proletariat as the ultimate justificatory grounds for such an engagement. Laurent Casanova, the Stalinist high priest of ideological purity in the PCF, thus defined the principal task of party intellectuals: ‘Rallier toutes les positions idéologiques et politiques de la classe ouvrière.’23 During his fellow-travelling years Sartre's ralliement to the PCF was consummated under precisely such terms.24 Neither approach made any allowances for scepticism or (p.178) moral relativism. When Albert Camus dared, in L'Homme révolté, to question the immanent ends which justified the recourse to violence and repression in the eyes of the intellectual Left, he was verbally assaulted not only by the PCF, but also by his erstwhile companion Sartre, for placing himself ‘outside’ the realm of concrete history.25 From such a high vantage-point, the interests of the working class were used by the Stalinists to sanitize the most abhorrent crimes, and this was probably the first important Page 7 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class reason for the decline in the status of the proletariat as a justifying source of moral action. The left-wing intellectual in France could easily appease his good conscience by vindicating his political actions and goals as necessary expressions of solidarity with an oppressed class. But this solidarity left a rather bitter after-taste when it also served to justify the existence of Soviet labour camps, the trial and execution of innocents in Prague, and the ruthless suppression of a popular revolt in Budapest. The repellent nature of some of the events sanctioned and defended by the Stalinists in the name of the proletariat, therefore, undermined the latter's status in the eyes of the broader community of the Left. Furthermore, it was obvious that the survival of this moral sanctity partly depended on the plausibility of the claim that the French proletariat could be treated as a relatively cohesive unit of political and sociological analysis. The increasing evidence of fragmentation in both of these areas by the late 1950s meant that such justificatory claims could be maintained only by falling back on an ideal (and almost always idealized) proletariat. Maurice Merleau-Ponty's indictment of the Sartrian conception of the proletariat could equally have been directed at the Stalinists in the PCF: ‘Le prolétariat dont parle Sartre n'est ni constatable, ni contestable, ni vivant, n'est pas un phénomène, c'est une catégorie déléguée pour représentor l'humanité …’.26 A final explanation of the decline in the ethical dimension of the proletariat's appeal to the radical intellectual may be suggested. In successfully presenting the proletariat as the sole embodiment of moral truth, Communists and existentialists were assisted by the fact that standards of public and private morality which were (p.179) set by collective groups and institutions were considered more ‘legitimate’ by social actors than norms which were the exclusive preserve of the individual. Throughout the first two decades which followed the Liberation the impact of these collective norms pervaded many significant aspects of public and private life. Perception of class, for example, retained a central significance in the individual's existence, and Catholicism continued to offer an extensive moral code of behaviour. After the s, however, social actors became increasingly reluctant to take their moral cues from established social and political institutions such as Party, Church, and Army. In this sense as well, the May movement confirmed a radical reorientation in the fabric of French society, by legitimating the principle of ethical individualism. Henceforth, the moral rules proclaimed by social and political institutions were increasingly superceded by the notion of radical individual autonomy in the ethical sphere.27 This new climate was clearly ill-suited to the survival of the belief in the paradigmatic moral quality of a mythical social class. In fact, by the middle of the 1970s it had become patently obvious to most outside observers that even the peuple communiste had ceased to recognize the incontestable authority of Page 8 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class the PCF in questions of private morality. This was confirmed by the violent reaction of militants during the preparatory stages of the twenty-second Congress in 1976, when the party leadership included the struggle against immorality as one of the principal goals of the PCF in the draft resolution.28 The bitter flavour of the episode for most party members was well summarized two years later by Jean Ristat: ‘Sur ces problèmes, le parti est actuellement le meilleur rempart, le meilleur garant de la morale petite-bourgeoise.’29

(p.180) The Communist Intellectual and the Working Class Despite its compressed character, the above survey has indicated that the noncommunist Left gradually expelled the proletarian star from its intellectual firmament. By the 1970s the PCF had become the only major intellectual force in France to define its political identity on the almost exclusive basis of its rapport with the working class. There were still, of course, political organizations to the Left of the Communists: the Trotskyite Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, together with neo-Marxist intellectual currents such as Maoism and anarchosyndicalism, continued to provide a focus for alternative conceptions of the theory and practice of communism. But these forces were no match for the sheer organizational might of the French Communists, who never ceased to regard the extreme Left as (at best) infantile and (at worst) dangerous agents provocateurs.30 In the following sections, accordingly, an attempt will be made to describe and account for the Communist intellectual's continuing fixation with the working class during the decade which followed the May events. This appeal may be expressed in the form of a variation on the theme of fraternity, sometimes based on the experience of practical interaction between the worker and the intellectual in the counter-community, and sometimes the result (p.181) of the intellectual's imaginary representation of the outcome of such interaction. The Communist intellectual's conception of the political and cultural appeal of the proletariat will be shown to have survived, despite attempts by the party leadership to blackmail its critics into submission by invoking its defence of the ‘real’ interests of the working class. Ultimately, this surviving fixation will illustrate the limits of the intellectuals' challenge to the PCF authorities, showing that the activities of the contestataires could not be construed as a serious threat to the social and political domination of the working class in the PCF. Fraternity

The basic appeal of the proletariat to the imagination of the Communist intellectual was well captured by Hélène Parmelin. On the one hand, most party intellectuals considered the working class as ‘la cause essentielle de leur appartenance au Parti’; on the other, the proletariat represented ‘une abstraction’.31 This subtle interplay between social reality and scholastic abstraction was most clearly displayed in the ‘fraternal’ dimension of the party Page 9 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class intellectual's representation of the proletariat, which stemmed directly from practical interaction with the working class in the counter-community. As Paul Noirot noted: ‘les intellectuels se sentent isolés socialement, professionellement; ils ont souvent le sentiment d'être des solitaires réduits à jeter des bouteilles à la mer. Aussi sont-ils particulierèment sensibles à la fraternité humaine réelle qui existe à la base du PC …’.32 From this perspective, the working class was anything but a metaphysical abstraction. The party counter-community provided the intellectual with a forum for extensive social intercourse with his camarades ouvriers. The wide range of practical tasks and rituals with which the ordinary party member was confronted guaranteed both the frequency and the scope of such interaction between worker and intellectual: ordinary meetings of the cellule, local distribution of party literature and propaganda, and weekend sales of the party newspaper L'Humanité-Dimanche. (p.182) While this form of interaction was typically sought by the intellectual whose social origins and professional occupations were external to the working class, a further variant of this form of fraternity could be discerned in the attitude of the intellectuels d'origine ouvrière, who found in the countercommunity the only means of preserving a sense of identification with the social class into which they were born. These ‘proletarian’ intellectuals, despite enjoying access to higher education, gainful employment, and a better life-style generally, were by no means reconciled to abandoning their original class. Thus, the PCF provided a bridge between the professional environment they had entered and the social community to which they initially belonged. In their Voyage à l'intérieur du Parti Communiste journalists André Harris and Alain de Sédouy found numerous instances of this disposition amongst party intellectuals of proletarian origin. The example of the normalien Pierre Juquin may be cited. Describing his identification with the PCF, he declared: ‘j'avais plutôt l'impression de revenir chez les miens—mon grand-père changeait les chaudières chez Michelin—et de mettre ce que je savais à leur service … Cela m'est resté, d'ailleurs, ce sentiment.’33 Besides the example of Henri Fiszbin, already mentioned in Chapter 3, it is also worth pointing to the itinerary of Charles Fiterman, whose career provides another striking illustration of the PCF's ability to transform working-class cadres into highly cultured political administrators. Born in 1933 into a family which had only recently migrated into France from Eastern Europe, Fiterman worked as an electrician in Saint-Étienne before joining the PCF in 1951. After rising through the different echelons of the party structure, he was appointed director of the party training school for cadres, the École Centrale. He later served in the party Secretariat as assistant to leaders Waldeck Rochet and Georges Marchais, before becoming a full member of the Politburo in 1979. Minister of Transport in the Mauroy government from 1981 to 1984, Fiterman remarked, upon taking office, that his greatest joy was to think of the sense of

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class pride experienced by workers at the appointment of one of their representatives as a Minister of State.34 (p.183) The appeal and experience of fraternal interaction with the working class constituted an enduring source of intellectual attachment to the PCF across several generations. It is highly instructive to note, for example, that the memoirs of former Stalinist intellectuals unfailingly paid tribute to the generosity and warmth of their contemporary working-class party members. From this point of view, the lyricism of Edgar Morin was exemplary: ‘j'avais trouvé dans le communisme stalinien le sentiment de communion et l'idée de communication qui atténuent ou dissipent l'obsession du malheur, de l'inutilité, du néant, de la solitude’.35 Paul Noirot stated: ‘J'ai connu une très grande fraternité d'hommes, dont nombre étaient d'une qualité exceptionelle, en tout cas d'un dévouement exemplaire, prêts à donner leur vie pour la cause à laquelle ils s'étaient voués.’36 This representation was well matched by fellow-traveller Louis de Villefosse's description of a proletarian party member of his acquaintance: ‘Dans la Résistance, il avait accompli, je crois bien, des actions sensationnelles, mais n'en parlait pas. Héros, il l'était encore tous les jours, en somme, de cet héroisme qui ne consiste pas tant à risquer la mort qu'à donner lentement sa vie … contre une seule récompense, la fraternité. Un de ces types dont j'étais secretèment fier d'être tutoyé.’37 Such encomia were not sufficient, however, to mask the existence of real conflicts between workers and intellectuals in the counter-community. Earlier generations of Communist intellectuals were often viewed with profound suspicion by their proletarian comrades on the grounds of their social origins. Jean Bruhat recalled the days when Communists at the École Normale Supérieure were summarily attached to a factory cell at Ivry, since ‘le P.C.F. n'aurait pas vu sans inquiétude se créer une cellule d'intellectuels’.38 The Cold War era in France similarly provided a fertile terrain for anti-intellectualism within the counter-community. As Paul Noirot pointed out, party intellectuals were under constant pressure to demonstrate their complete rejection of the values of their original class: their treachery was assumed until (p.184) and unless they could establish their innocence.39 After the s, however, intellectuals were increasingly accepted into the party as legitimate bearers of a distinct social and professional identity. It would be excessive to claim that the oldfashioned anti-intellectual instincts of working-class party members disappeared entirely at this juncture. But the fact that the party leadership no longer appeared to condone these instincts made a perceptible difference to the internal climate within the counter-community. It was, accordingly, extremely rare to find complaints about direct expressions of working-class hostility towards party intellectuals during the 1970s, even after the development of the intra-party dispute. The dimension of fraternal interaction appeared, at first

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class glance, to have survived the acrimony and turmoil of the conflict between the party leadership and the critical intellectuals after 1978. Fraternal tensions

A closer look at the writings of the critical intellectuals, none the less, suggested that their experience of fraternal interaction with the working class was not entirely devoid of tensions. The manner in which these dilemmas were confronted and ultimately resolved, however, indicated that the intellectuals' collective demand for a more equitable distribution of roles in the PCF did not constitute a serious challenge to the social and political hegemony of the proletariat in the counter-community. A first potential source of tension was identified by Maurice Goldring in his contribution40 to the critical debates within the party in 1978. Reviewing the respective positions of workers and intellectuals in the counter-community, he argued that it would be presumptuous to expect that each side should live in total concord with the other. In fact, conflicts between the two groups would be ‘enrichissants’,41 since both sides would be compelled to learn the art of compromise, without which no pluralistic community could survive indefinitely. In presenting his case for greater toleration of political diversity in the PCF, Goldring made a gentle but firm (p.185) attack on the intellectual's representation of the working class in the counter-community. The social, political, and cultural limitations of the party leadership had been the object of withering criticism by the dissident intellectuals after March 1978. These attacks ranged from denunciations of the General Secretary in person to condemnations of the entire structure of authority in the PCF.42 Goldring's response to both the tone and substance of these attacks was to argue that the leaders of the labour movement could emerge only from the working class itself. This process of discovery and political education would necessarily take time, and required intellectuals to exercise the virtues of patience and tolerance.43 Although Goldring did not elaborate upon this theme, the manifest implication of his argument was that intellectuals who set up their own standards to judge the proletarian leadership of the PCF were as guilty of intolerance as those who were the object of their criticism. In taking up such an approach, party intellectuals were effectively inverting the Stalinist practice of adopting ‘proletarian’ standards for judging the actions of the intellectual. The solution to the problem of worker—intellectual conflict, therefore, could not reside in the imposition of standards of belief and action by one group on another, but in the common recognition that neither party could possibly claim a monopoly of the truth. The obvious problem with this line of argument, of course, was that few (if any) party intellectuals would readily have admitted to holding such narcissistic standards for evaluating the proletariat. But, even if an open verdict ultimately has to be returned on this particular case, it was at least clear that many party intellectuals resented the way in which party leaders attempted, after 1978, to Page 12 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class use their ‘proletarian’ social origins to legitimate their conduct and vilify that of their critics. The most immediate target of this criticism was the General Secretary himself. The party leadership and the problem of ouvriérisme

The evolution of the image of Georges Marchais in the eyes of the Communist intellectual community is a question which deserves (p.186) some attention. It would be entirely inaccurate to assume that the predominantly negative image of the PCF leader (both inside the party and in society at large44) in the 1980s was an inheritance of the previous decade. Although his spoken French could be rather picturesque, his social graces far from perfect, and, unlike his predecessor Maurice Thorez, his inclination (let alone ability) to engage in intellectual activities was at best limited, Marchais was, on the whole, treated with considerable respect by party intellectuals, who perceived him as one of the principal agents of the PCF's aggiornamento during the phase of left-wing unity. In rather characteristic fashion, party intellectuals bent over backwards to transform the party leader's vices privées into vertus publiques. Raymond Jean, Professor of French Literature at Aix-en-Provence, contrasting the rugged contours of Marchais's personality with the aristocratic elegance of Italian Communist Party (PCI) leader Enrico Berlinguer, indicated that it was extremely valuable for the French party to be led by ‘l'expression concrète et active d'une force de frappe populaire et permanente’.45 Discussing the broader historical differences between the PCF and the PCI, Jean Rony also concluded by welcoming Georges Marchais as the symbol of the PCF's ‘authenticité issue du peuple’.46 As the intra-party dispute developed, however, there was a marked deterioration in the rapports between party intellectuals and their leader. This process was set in motion at the April 1978 session of the Central Committee, when Marchais delivered a scathing attack on the noxious role played by armchair intellectuals in the party.47 From this point on, critics no longer held back from expressing their reservations about the PCF leader's (p.187) image in the media,48 his aggressive and intolerant character,49 and his use of neo-Stalinist methods to quell intellectual dissent in the party.50 At the heart of the intellectuals' response, however, was the rejection of Georges Marchais's explicit use of the PCF leadership's proletarian social origins as a means of silencing its critics. Yet, an element of ambivalence could be detected in the articulation of this disapproval. The party leadership's technique could be rejected on two grounds: the first, and most obvious, was that arguments between party members should be settled on the basis of their intrinsic intellectual merits, and not on the basis of the social origins of their proponents. On the whole, however, it was interesting to note that critical intellectuals chose a second route, which consisted of denying that the party leadership was truly the vox populi, on the grounds that it was completely isolated from the proletariat whose interests it claimed to represent.51 Whether the choice of this alternative approach implied Page 13 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class that party intellectuals still lacked the confidence to reject the crude sociological reductionism of the first argument is a question which deserves to be asked, even if there is not enough substantive evidence to provide a conclusive answer. Behind the individual problem of the party leader's attitude towards intellectuals loomed the wider question of the survival of an ouvriériste political culture in the PCF. As noted in Chapter 2, ouvriérisme defined the attitude of those who believed that workers alone were qualified to lead the socialist movement. As the syndicalist Fernand Pelloutier wrote in his Histoire des Bourses du Travail (1902): ‘le prolétariat possède en lui-même l'instrument de son émancipation’.52 The PCF inherited this conception of the self-sufficient character of the French proletariat, which was further reinforced by the impact of Stalinist ideology and practice on the party. As noted, however, party intellectuals appeared to have little experience of this problem in the 1960s and 1970s, until the tirades of Georges Marchais seemed to (p.188) revive ‘les vieux réflexes anti-intellectuels toujours latents dans le parti’.53 Again, the manner in which this daemon was exorcised suggested that intellectuals were prepared to go quite far in order to preserve their image d'Épinal of the social and political virtues of the working class. The intellectuals' solution to the problem of ouvriérisme, expressed in schematic form, was to reduce the phenomenon to a form of political manipulation by the PCF leadership. As Michel Barak stated: ‘l'ouvriérisme est rarement le fait des ouvriers de la grande industrie, mais il est cultivé, même inconsciemment, comme un moyen d'action contre ceux qui posent des questions, qualifiés aussitôt “d'intellectuels” comme d'une marque infâmante.’54 However well taken this point might be, its implication was that the phenomenon of ouvriérisme was sustained for political rather than socio-cultural reasons. Left to themselves, Barak seemed to suggest, French workers would not have dreamt of excluding their intellectual brethren from the political struggle. It might seem strange that the problem of ouvriérisme should thus be effaced without proper consideration of the extent of its existence in working-class communities in France. It can only be hypothesized, again, that this solution offered a satisfactory way out of the intellectuals' dilemma in at least three respects. It kept the debate at the level of politics, and thus enabled the critics to make the party leadership shoulder the responsibility for the existence of antiintellectual attitudes. It also allowed many intellectuals to gloss over the unfortunate fact that their practical knowledge of working-class communities was so limited that the existence of an ouvriériste mentality was not something they could describe from immediate experience. Finally, it preserved a pure and sanctified image of the working class, which, as the following section will show, remained an absolutely essential underpinning of the Communist intellectual's identification with the PCF.

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class Imaginary communities

A further type of tension in the party counter-community stemmed from the perception of differences in the respective social and (p.189) cultural affinities of workers and intellectuals. The intellectual whose social origins lay outside the charmed circle of the proletariat joined the PCF on the basis of his empathy with the political objectives of the party. From this perspective, he shared a common political commitment with the working-class member of the organization. But even the most intense form of engagement could not conceal substantial differences in education and cultural interests between the two social groups. These differences often constituted an obstacle to the development of a more intimate relationship between worker and intellectual. A classic example of this problem was provided by the itinerary of Antoine Spire in the party counter-community. The second son of a Jewish Professor of Philosophy, Spire was educated in an environment in which the intrinsic value of intellectual endeavour was strongly emphasized. After completing his education at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales, Spire joined the PCF shortly before May 1968. He was, thus, a typical representative of the couches nouvelles, whose conversion to Communism was considered to be one of the essential objectives of the PCF under Waldeck Rochet. In a radical sense, Spire sought to sever most links with his former bourgeois universe after joining the PCF. He now considered the counter-community as his ‘famille’,55 and consecrated this break by moving to the city of Ivry, the ‘bastion et terre de mission’56 of French Communism in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris. However, the social consequences of this almost idealistic drift towards ‘the people’ did not live up to Spire's high expectations. From a political point of view, he had few grounds for complaint: the selfless devotion of working-class party activists corresponded in every way to his paradigm of the Communist militant.57 But this interaction at the political level did nothing to bridge the considerable gap in both educational standards and cultural interests that separated him from his working-class comrades. Spire confessed that, even after several years of militant activity in the party (coupled with residence in a predominantly working-class community), he was still unable to establish intimate friendships (p.190) with his proletarian colleagues.58 Interestingly enough, this relative social failure had little impact on Spire's political representation of the working class, which still constituted ‘l'une des sources essentielles’ of his attachment to French Communism.59 Given the problematic nature of Spire's social experiences with the proletariat at Ivry, there was evidently some element of a priori faith in his continuing attachment to this social class. Ultimately, this underscored the validity of the Marxian postulate quoted earlier,60 and thus brought out the essential distinction between two types of intellectual representation of the proletariat: a living social reality on the one hand, and a theoretical category within the Page 15 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class Marxist philosophical system on the other. The party intellectual's identification with Communism, it may be concluded, was not necessarily supported by concrete experience of social and political interaction with the working class. If the results of the latter process failed to meet his expectations, the intellectual could always find solace in the comforting arms of the ‘mythical’ proletariat, an inherently more satisfying companion, as Spire's experience showed, than the real inhabitants of suburban working-class communities. This idealization of the proletariat was not solely the imaginary product of the party intellectual's failed expectations. In a very obvious sense, since social and political interaction with the working class depended on physical contiguity, party intellectuals who did not reside in urban areas were denied the opportunity of everyday access to members of the proletariat. Although some intellectuals, such as Antoine Spire, solved this problem by physical relocation in working-class communities, those who did not exercise this choice (such as the vast majority of rural members of the PCF) were denied the possibility of such social intercourse. Yet, as members of the parti de la classe ouvrière, they could not fail to have some conception of the social class which defined the identity of their party. The way in which this iconography of the proletariat was constructed and preserved provided another interesting angle on the party intellectual's representation of the working class. (p.191) From this point of view, the experiences of Gérard Belloin were highly pertinent to this analysis. His contribution to the intra-party dispute after 1978 took the form of a reflective meditation on his past experiences as a ‘rural’ Communist.61 Belloin grew up in the ‘monde immobile’ of provincial France, in a family which had originally been involved in small-scale farming but was now reduced to servicing the domestic needs of the local haute bourgeoisie.62 Agricultural workers, artisans, and office clerks dominated the social composition of the PCF section to which his cell was attached. Thus, the urban proletariat was entirely absent from the local society in which the party operated. Despite this absence of physical interaction, however, the working class was never far removed from the intellectual horizons of local party members. As Belloin's account makes abundantly clear, most of his comrades in the party had a distinct image of the urban proletariat: not only of its strictly political attitudes, but also of its social and cultural identity. Thus, the urban proletariat acquired an almost Promethean quality in Belloin's eyes. This mythical dimension was partly fashioned, of course, by the purely political properties attributed to the working class as a social group. But an equally important source of fascination for a provincial intellectual such as Belloin was the fact that the proletariat also constituted a potent representation of the big city—an indisputable object of attraction for someone who had ‘toujours rêvé, au fond, de devenir un intellectuel’.63

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class It is interesting to note the central role played by the Communist press in sustaining these mythical representations of the political and cultural attributes of the urban proletariat. As Belloin made clear, as long as the party newspaper L'Humanité remained his principal source of information, urban PCF strongholds such as Ivry, Île-Saint-Denis, and Gennevilliers acquired a fantastic and almost intimidating aura in his mind. The red belt of the Parisian suburbs, thus, assumed the definitive characteristics of a provincial Communist intellectual's paradise: a cohesive proletarian community, profoundly imbued with revolutionary political consciousness, and yet also a centre of intellectual and creative (p.192) excellence, in which the social underdogs of this world were already preparing to become the political and cultural managers of the next. Ultimately, these different representations of the proletariat suggested that tensions in the relations between workers and intellectuals in the countercommunity were liable to be handled on a variety of registers, which, none the less, shared a common tendency to ignore, undervalue, or suppress potential sources of conflict. The problem of ouvriérisme, as has been seen, was blamed on cynical manipulation by the party leadership. None of the critical intellectuals was prepared to consider the matter as a real social phenomenon requiring explanation and analysis. The failure of the proletariat fully to satisfy the intellectual's cultural and political expectations was met either with selfreproach for judging the working class by excessively demanding standards (as in the case of Goldring), or with retreat on to a strictly political plane of interaction, in which worker and intellectual were regarded as absolute equals (the approach taken by Spire). Each of these responses, it will be noted, stemmed from the intellectual's concrete experiences in the counter-community. The most interesting reaction, however, came from the intellectual who had no direct experience of the proletariat. Belloin took the intellectual's predilection for abstract representation to its logical conclusion by substituting an imaginary community for the ‘real’ proletariat, of which he had no experience. He stood as a shining example of the sort of Communist intellectual who might say that if the proletariat did not exist, it would need to be invented. Articles of faith

The party intellectual's confidence in the eschatological properties of the proletariat appeared to have survived both the changing winds in the broader intellectual community and the development of the intra-party dispute after 1978. Despite the occasionally contorted nature of the justificatory arguments produced, as indicated above, it was quite remarkable to note the extent to which party intellectuals persisted in upholding traditional articles of faith in the working class, long after their abandonment by the non-communist Left. None of the tensions identified in the section above, for example, faced up to the empirical question of the (p.193) steady decline in working-class support for Page 17 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class the PCF after 1958, let alone to the more contentious issues of whether the French proletariat could still be considered both as a homogenous unit of sociological analysis and as the principal social agent of the revolutionary process.64 A clear example of this imperviousness was provided by the response of most critical intellectuals to the ‘discours misérabiliste’65 of the PCF during the campaign for the legislative elections of March 1978. The new strategic direction taken by the party leadership after the break with the Socialists in September 1977 was illustrated by the development of a campaign against ‘poverty’ in France, symbolized by the PCF slogan of ‘seize millions de pauvres’.66 Not surprisingly, most party intellectuals roundly criticized this tactical approach after the development of the intra-party dispute. Typically enough, however, the major thrust of their criticism was not directed at questioning the accuracy of the party's description of the condition of the working class. Rather, intellectuals complained that the PCF's almost exclusive focus on the theme of poverty during the electoral campaign represented an implicit departure from the party's strategic principle of the alliance of the working class with the intellectuals. Gérard Belloin, for example, criticized the party's campaign theme as an example of the inconsistent way in which the PCF had applied the ‘stratégic du Vingt-Deuxième Congrès’.67 In other words, the party's fundamental mistake resided in the narrowness of its social and political focus on the working class. On the other hand, the rather obvious question of the adequacy of the PCF's representation of the proletariat as the living embodiment of human misery rarely appeared to trouble the minds of most intellectuals during the intra-party dispute. Even as subtle and perceptive a critic as Jacques Brière, despite his wide-ranging attack on the party's failure to apprehend the complexities of social reality, (p.194) only ventured so far as to suggest that the worker's subjective perception of his condition did not correspond to his objective status as a victim of poverty and exploitation.68 Although pertinent, this observation effectively reduced the sociological inadequacy of the PCF's analysis to a failure to take sufficient account of the problem of false consciousness. It should be concluded, therefore, that the basic assumption of the existence of a clearly identifiable social class which personified the misery of mankind under capitalism (as well as its hopes of salvation in the au-delà) was essentially shared by both the party leadership and the critical intellectuals. Furthermore, the above analysis has shown that the intellectuals' claim for a more equitable distribution of roles in the PCF did not amount to a serious challenge to the social and political hegemony of the working class in the organization. In fact, the underlying mythology of la grande classe ouvrière remained such a powerful component of the dissidents' vision throughout the intra-party dispute that it may be asked whether they had considered the full implications of their Page 18 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class collective demand for an enhancement of the status of the intellectual in the PCF. Notes:

(1) In Profession permanent (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 188. (2) Gérard Belloin, Nos rêves camarades: Infi(r)me(s) mémoires (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 183. (3) In the 1950s the PCF was receiving the votes of approximately 49 per cent of the French working class. See R. W. Johnson, The Long March of the French Left (London: Macmillan, 1981), 140. The social composition of the PCF electorate in 1952 bore further witness to this proposition, with 51 per cent consisting of white- and blue-collar workers (13 per cent and 38 per cent respectively), and a further 24 per cent of the unemployed. See Jean Ranger, ‘L'Évolution du vote communiste en France depuis 1945’, in Le Communisme en France (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1969), 242–3. (4) From André Stil, Le Premier Choc (1951), quoted in David Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals (London: André Deutsch, 1964), 333–4. (5) See Jean Chariot, The Gaullist Phenomenon (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971), 74. (6) Thus, the poet Louis Aragon denounced the trial and condemnation of Soviet writers A. Siniavski and Y. Daniel for ‘délit d'opinion’. See L' Humanité, 16 Feb. 1966. (7) Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1957), 68. (8) Thorez's articles on the subject were published in Cahiers du communisme, Mar. and July-Aug. 1955. (9) The leading theoretician here was Cornelius Castoriadis, who defined the general orientation of the group in his contribution to the first issue of the journal Socialisme ou barbarie in Mar. 1949. (10) See André Gorz, Stratégie ouvrière et néo-capitalisme (Paris: Seuil, 1964); Pierre Belleville, Une nouvelle classe ouvrière (Paris: Temps Modernes, 1963); and Serge Mallet, La Nouvelle Classe ouvrière (Paris: Seuil, 1963). (11) Fittingly enough, the two most original contributions to the question of establishing clear criteria for defining the working class came from the enfants terribles of the PCF in the 1960s, Roger Garaudy and Louis Althusser. Garaudy's predominantly political approach reduced the issue to a question of revolutionary consciousness. In this sense, the proletariat was not fundamentally Page 19 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class different from other social groups which challenged the political status quo. Hence Garaudy's conclusion that ‘le mouvement ouvrier et le mouvement étudiant sont des moments d'une même totalité’ (Toute la vérité (Paris: Grasset, 1970), 41). But this minor heterodoxy paled in comparison with the sheer philosophical audacity of Louis Althusser, who, by expelling human subjectivity from the historical process, effectively defined the working class solely in terms of its membership of revolutionary organizations such as the party and the trade union. Since these were the only structures capable of historical agency, it logically followed that the proletariat-in-itself had no independent existence (see his éponse à John Lewis (Paris: Maspéro, 1973), 48–9). (12) In his La Ré volution urbaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1970). (13) As an example, the following offering from Alain Touraine's Le Retour de l' acteur (Paris: Fayard, 1984, p. 133) may be cited: ‘Les classes sociales d'aujourd'hui ne sont plus des figures historiquement repérables et nommables; car elles ne peuvent être définies que par des rapports de classes largement recouverts par le pouvoir des Etats et des partis.’ (14) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, iv (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975), 37; emphasis in text. (15) See Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Les Communistes et la paix’, in Les Temps modernes, July 1952, pp. 32–3. (16) See Arthur Hirsh, The French Left: A History and Overview (Montreal: Black Rose, 1982), 126. (17) In Ch. 2 an illustration of this tendency was provided in the critique of the ‘political culture’ approach adopted by Francois Hincker and Pierre Juquin. (18) See Francois Fejto, The French Communist Party and the Crisis of International Communism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1967), 39. (19) For the full text of the petition, and the complete list of signatories, see JeanFranqois Sirinelli, Intellectuels et passions françaises: Manifestes et pétitions au XXème siècle(Paris: Fayard, 1990), 211–13. (20) Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Preface’, in Frantz Fanon, Les Damnés de la terre (Paris: Maspero, 1961), 10, 24. (21) ‘Apathetic and apolitical’ is how Daniel Cohn-Bendit described the French proletariat in the 1960s; see his Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative (London: Penguin, 1969), 103.

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class (22) As he stated: ‘We are not going anywhere, History has no meaning … The logic of capital has brought us to the threshold of liberation, [which] can only come from individuals themselves. Only the non-class of non-producers is capable of such an act. For it alone embodies what lies beyond productivism: the rejection of the accumulation ethic and the dissolution of all classes.’ See André Gorz, Farewell to the Working-Class (London: Pluto, 1982), 74. (23) Laurent Casanova, ‘Responsabilités de l'intellectuel communiste’, Cahiers du communisme, Apr. 1949, p. 459. (24) See Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Les Commumstes et la paix’, in Les Temps modernes, Apr. 1954. (25) See Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Réponse à Albert Camus’, in Les Temps modernes, Aug. 1952. (26) In Les Aventures de la dialectique (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), 227. (27) In the words of the sociologist Henri Mendras: ‘Il semble qu'aujourd'hui les Français préfèrent leur “personne en particulier” aux différents “tout” dont ils font partie. Très récent, ce changement constitue une révolution dans les fondements même de la morale et de la sensibilité …’ See his La Seconde Révolution française 1965–1984 (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 302. (28) After denouncing the ‘pourriture’ and ‘décadence’ of contemporary French society, the draft stated: ‘Nous luttons pour un monde nouveau. Nous combattons la violence, la haine, l'immoralité …’; quoted in Georges Lavau, A quoi serf le Parti Communiste Français? (Paris: Fayard, 1981), 158. (29) Quoted in Michel Barak, Fractures au PCF (Aix-en-Provence: Edisud/ Karthala, 1980), 20. It is interesting to note that much of the available evidence on the social and moral values of the PCF mass membership and sympathizers in the 1970s shows a wide range of ‘permissive’ attitudes, both in absolute and relative (i.e. compared to the values of other groups on the political spectrum) terms. The PCF leadership's continuing attachment to a puritanical conception of morality was thus one of the numerous illustrations of the yawning gap between the upper and lower echelons of the party organization. For further details, consult the surveys garnered in Lavau, A quoi sert le Parti Communiste Français?, 175–7; and the interviews of PCF members in Y. Quilès and J. Tornikian, Sous le PC, les communistes (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 13 – 55. More recent data on the values of PCF sympathizers, however, seems to indicate a swing in the opposite direction, showing a sharp increasee in intolerant and repressive attitudes on issues such as homosexuality and the death penalty. See Olivier Duhamel, ‘Une Sociologie de la permissivité’, in SOPRES: Opinion publique 1986 (Paris: Gallimard, 1986).

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class (30) Georges Marchais was never allowed to forget his endearing description of student leader Cohn-Bendit as an ‘anarchiste allemand’. See L'Humanité, 3 May 1968. The history of the PCF's relations with the extreme Left in France was hardly marked by mutual tenderness, although the PCF did officially protest against the dissolution of the LCR (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire) and the arrest of its leader Krivine in June 1973. See Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman, Géneration: Les Années de poudre (Paris: Seuil, 1988), 506–10. (31) Hélène Parmelin, Libérez les communistes! (Paris: Stock-Opéra Mundi, 1979), 153. (32) Paul Noirot, La Mé moire ouverte (Paris: Stock, 1976), 71. (33) André Harris and Alain de Sédouy, Voyage à l'intérieur du Parti Communiste (Paris: Seuil, 1974), 137. (34) See Le Nouvel Observateur, 29 June—5 July 1981. (35) Edgar Morin, Autocntique (Paris: Seuil, 1975), 53. (36) Noirot, La Mémoire ouverte, 323. (37) Louis de Villefosse, L'Œuf de Wyasma (Paris: Julliard, 1962), 234–5; emphasis added. (38) Jean Bruhat, Il n'est jamais trop tard (Paris: Albin Michel, 1983), 51. (39) See Noirot, La Mémoire ouverte, 91–2. (40) Maurice Goldring, L'Accident: Un intellectuel communiste dans le débat du printemps 1978 (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1978). (41) Ibid. 54. (42) At the Vitry meeting between 400 intellectuals and the party leadership a Communist lawyer from Lyon described the entire party leadership as ‘des hommes de marbre’. See L'Humanité, 11 Dec. 1978. (43) Goldring, L'Accident, 38. (44) For indications of Georges Marchais's negative image in the party, see Michel Cardoze, Nouveau voyage à l'intérieur du Parti Communiste (Paris: Fayard, 1986), passim; for the public's view, see the collapse in the party leader's personal image in ‘La Cote d'avenir des principales personnalités de gauche’ (1981–8), in SOFRES: L'État de l'opinion (Paris: Seuil, 1989), 154. (45) Raymond Jean, La Singularité d'être communiste (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 74.

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class (46) Jean Rony, Trente ans de parti: Un communiste s'interroge (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1978), 147. (47) ‘Il est vrai que c'est plus facile de monologuer, assis derrière un bureau, et de rédiger en dehors de la vie, à l'abri de toute contestation de la part de ses camarades, des articles péremptoires qui trouveront facilement preneur.’ See L'Humanité, 27 Apr. 1978. (48) See e.g. Étienne Balibar's views at the Dec. 1978 Vitry meeting, in Gérard Molina and Yves Vargas (eds.), Ouverture d'une discussion? (Paris: Maspéro, 1979), 100; and G. Molina and Y. Vargas, ibid. 68–9. (49) See Quilès and Tornikian, Sous le PC, 203–12. (50) Hélène Parmelin at the Vitry meeting, quoted in L'Humanité, 11 Dec. 1978. (51) See e.g. Jacques Brière, Vive la crise! (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 177–8. (52) Quoted in Jean Bron, Histoire du mouvement ouvrier français, ii (Paris: Éditions Ouvrières, 1970), 58; emphasis added. (53) Henri Fiszbin, Les Bouches s'ouvrent (Paris: Grasset, 1980), 43. (54) Barak, Fractures au PCF, 68–9. (55) Spire, Profession permanent, 40. (56) Ibid. 163. (57) Ibid. 165. (58) Ibid. 171. (59) Ibid. 49. (60) See n. 14. (61) Belloin, Nos rêves camarades. (62) Ibid. 27. (63) Ibid. 142. (64) Both these questions are raised in Jacques Fremontier's La Vie en bleu: Voyage en culture ouvrière (Paris: Fayard, 1980), although (or perhaps because) the author had by then ceased to be an intellectuel de parti. (65) In the words of Maurice Goldring and Yvonne Quilès, in Sous le marteau, la plume (Paris: Mégrelis, 1982), 52. Page 23 of 24

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The Limits of Subjectivity: Communist Intellectuals and the Working Class (66) See, for illustration, the reports on the PCF National Conference held on 7 Jan. 1978, in L'Humanité, 10 Jan. 1978. (67) Goldring and Quilès, Sous le marteau, 182. (68) Brière, Vive la crise!, 147.

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A Party Like All Others?

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

A Party Like All Others? Sudhir Hazareesingh

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the extent to which the intra-party dispute in the French Communist Party (PCF) from 1978–80 led the critics of the Communist leadership to reconsider the nature of their attachment to the party. It argues that during this period, there remains an underlying tension between the critique of the principle of democratic centralism and the intellectuals' rejection of factional activity on the traditional Leninist grounds of preserving the political cohesion of the PCF. The chapter shows that on the institutional level, many PCF critics were driven by the objective of completing the party's integration into national political, thus questioning the traditional claim that the PCF is a parti pas comme les autres. Keywords:   intra-party dispute, French Communist Party, intellectuals, democratic centralism, Leninism, political cohesion

THIS chapter will examine the extent to which the intra-party dispute of 1978– 80 led the critics of the Communist leadership to reconsider the nature of their attachment to the PCF. As argued in the preceding chapter, the intellectuals withheld from addressing the full implications of their criticisms of the social mores of the PCF. Many of the critics stressed their distinctive social identity as intellectuals, and there was an important sense in which the intra-party dispute represented a collective demand on their part for a more equitable distribution of roles in the collective life of the PCF. This aspiration never acquired a genuinely corporatist character, however, because the rebellious intellectuals

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A Party Like All Others? stopped well short of challenging the symbolic and substantive supremacy of the working class in the party organization. The limits of the intellectuals' self-assertion will be explored further in this chapter. It will be argued that there remained an underlying tension between the critique of the principle of democratic centralism, the application ofwhich stifled the free communication of ideas in the counter-community, and the intellectuals' rejection of factional activity, on the traditional Leninist grounds of preserving the political cohesion of the PCF. As the second section will demonstrate, the intellectuals objected to the ‘scientific’ pretensions of the PCF leadership, but, none the less, continued to believe in the inherent superiority of Marxist theory as an instrument for representing and classifying the social universe. Few critics challenged the essentially rationalist premiss that the totality of social phenomena could be rendered intelligible in this way, and only a very small number considered the dangerous political implications of a theory which could support the belief that human behaviour should conform to certain predetermined patterns. The final section will show that, at an institutional level, many (p.196) of the critics were driven by the basic objective of completing the integration of the PCF into national political life, thus implicitly questioning the traditional vanguardist claim that the PCF was a parti pas comme les autres. A closer examination of the underlying sources of the critics' affiliation to the party, however, showed that a form of ‘party patriotism’1 was still in evidence in the intellectuals' ranks, operating on the basis of an almost metaphysical identification of the PCF with the achievements of universal reason. To this extent, the tension between the intellectuals' desire to normalize the internal practices of the PCF and their continuing belief in the exceptional attributes of the organization remained unresolved.

The Challenge to Vanguardism Within the problematic of ‘official’ Marxism in France, the issue of the role of the proletariat was almost inseparable from the question of the nature of the vanguard organization. The preservation, contre vents et marées, of the Communist intellectuals' fixation with the proletariat was noted in the preceding chapter. This continuing obsession naturally raised the question of the critics' confidence in the continuing capability of the PCF to represent the political interests of this social class after 1978. At the height of Communist hegemony over the Left, the manner in which the PCF acquitted itself with regard to defending these interests was not a question which many radical intellectuals felt entitled to dispute. The legitimacy of the PCF in the eyes of the intellectual community after the Liberation was not a function of its performance in the socio-political arena, but simply a consequence of the overwhelming support the party received from the French Page 2 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? working class. For intellectuals such as Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, the PCF was the political mouthpiece of the proletariat, and this fact in itself was sufficient to bestow all the virtues of proletarian legitimacy upon the party. This centrality of the PCF in the social and political landscape rendered futile any revolutionary project which did not have the full support of the Communists, as Sartre fully recognized in 1952: ‘J'ai toujours (p.197) pensé qu'on ne pouvait pas reconstituer cette gauche, dont l'absence se fait durement sentir en France aujourd'hui, contre le Parti communiste. Je pense aujourd'hui qu'on ne peut pas la reconstituer sans lui.’2 After the loss of the PCF's hegemony over the proletariat, however, the non-communist Left ceased to take seriously the party's credentials as a vanguard organization. Although Communist intellectuals, on the other hand, continued to regard the working class as an almost immanent social and political category throughout the 1960s and 1970s, their experiences in the counter-community increasingly brought to the fore the question of the adequacy of the PCF's performance as a vanguard organization. In the eyes of most French party intellectuals in the 1970s, an essential part of the legitimacy of the PCF rested on its continuing ability to defend the fundamental interests of the working class. As Maurice Goldring noted: Le Parti communiste existe d'abord pour permettre à la classe ouvrière d'intervenir dans les luttes sociales et politiques. Constituer une organisation, permettre la réflexion collective, l'unification des luttes, la formation de cadres politiques, autant de nécéssités pour que la classe ouvrière joue un rôle de partenaire égal avec les autres forces politiques et sociales … Faire parvenir la classe ouvrière au sommet du pouvoir politique, lui faire partager ce pouvoir à égalité avec d'autres catégories sociales, c'est bousculer les habitudes.3 If this statement was taken as paradigmatic, it became clear that the question of the PCF's identity as a vanguardist institution emerged as central to the concerns of intellectuals as the intra-party dispute unfolded.

The immediate intellectual challenge to the PCF's vanguardist pretensions after March 1978 centred on the capacity of the organization to satisfy one of the fundamental requirements of the revolutionary party, as defined by Goldring in the above statement: the promotion of ‘la réflexion collective’ within the counter-community. Almost all party intellectuals were united in their criticism of the deficiencies of the PCF in this area during the (p.198) intra-party dispute. The principal reason for the prominence of this issue in the immediate aftermath of the elections was the refusal of the PCF leadership to grant the critics' request for access to the columns of the party press. As noted earlier, party leader Georges Marchais invoked an obscure ‘règle de fonctionnement du parti’ to justify the suppression of critical views in L'Humanité and FranceNouvelle. The most immediate effect of this recourse to internal censorship was to provoke many intellectuals to air their grievances outside the official Page 3 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? publishing networks of the party. In a wider sense, however, the party leadership's attitude triggered an extensive internal debate over the nature of the PCF's organizational principles. This inevitably brought the question of ‘democratic centralism’ to the centre of the discussion, especially as the leadership hadinsisted ad nauseam on the exceptionally democratic character of the party's internal life. To quote one of Georges Marchais's numerous declarations on the subject: ‘Chez nous aujourd'hui, pas de sujet tabou, pas de crime lèse-dirigeant, pas de bureaucrates et pas d'arrivistes, pas de rappel à l'ordre, pas de limite à la critique, pas de menaces et pas d'exclusion. Voilà ce qui permet une conception vivante du centralisme démocratique.’4 These repeated expressions of good faith, however, did little to shake the scepticism of the party intellectuals. The absence of democracy in the internal life of the PCF remained an essential source of controversy between the party leadership and its critics at all stages of the intra-party dispute. In the immediate aftermath of the legislative elections of March 1978, for example, all the petitions of critical intellectuals published in Le Monde highlighted the problem ofinternal democracy,5 as did the individual contributionsof Jean Ellenstein6 and Louis Althusser.7 An article in the official party journal La Nouvelle Critique attested to the centrality of the issue by stating that ‘il faut verser au dossier du centralisme démocratique la question de la distinction entre débat (p.199) interne du parti et débat public’.8 In December 1978 the Vitry meeting with critical intellectuals, organized by the party leadership, echoed similar concerns. In his public intervention, for example, Michel Paty (a member of the editorial committee of the party journal La Pensée) stressed the need for the PCF to evolve a ‘nouveau style de travail et de lutte’,9 based on new principles which enhanced the flow of information and communication between party members10—a direct attack on the limitations of democratic centralism. The controversy over the question of intra-party democracy did not subside in the following year. The new party constitution, adopted at the twenty-third Congress of the PCF in May 1979, was clearly introduced to appease the rebellion within the counter-community. Article 7, for instance, extended the scope of internal discussion, so as to enable the party to ‘corriger les défauts et les erreurs, de surmonter les faiblesses et les insuffisances’.11 This tentative step in the critics' direction was completely overshadowed, however, by the emergence of the ‘Paris affair’. Serious disagreements over policy implementation arose between the party leadership and the Paris Federation of the PCF. These conflicts culminated in the resignation of the entire Parisian Secretariat, led by its First Secretary Henri Fiszbin, by November 1979. While the intra-party disputants, until this stage, had concentrated their fire on the absence of democracy at the lower reaches of the party, the ‘Paris affair’ provided a striking illustration of the authoritarian nature of the decision-making process even at the highest levels of the apparatus. From the perspective of the principal victim of the episode, the ‘Paris affair’ was a reflection of the growing Page 4 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? chasm between the party leadership and the mass membership. Fiszbin argued that the absence of internal democracy in the PCF was primarily a function of the party leadership'slack of confidence in the ‘maturité’ of the militants.12 The arguments which raged over the question of internal democracy (p.200) expressed a central concern of critical intellectuals throughout the intra-party dispute: the failure of the PCF to encourage the free expression and communication of ideas between its members, thereby stultifying the réflexion collective of the party. Despite the passionate sentiments expressed during the dispute, however, the dissidents failed to address systematically the question of organized factional activity in the counter-community. This was another example of the profoundly ambivalent attitude of the critics towards the traditional social and political norms of the Communist counter-community, and provided a graphic illustration of the extent to which most intellectuals remained deeply marked by the dominant behavioural paradigms of the PCF. The rejection of factional activity

The ban on factions in West European Communist Parties was one of the most durable of Lenin's legacies to the international communist movement. Already implicit in the ‘Twenty-One Conditions’ drafted by Leninin August 1920 at the second Komintern Congress,13 this suppression of organized activity within the party was officially enacted in March 1921, at the tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party.14 During the Stalinist period this principle was rigorously enforced, often sanctioning the outcome of high-level power struggles. In the PCF, for example, such leading figures in the party leadership as André Marty and Charles Tillon were evicted from their positions in 1952, on the (spurious) grounds that they had engaged in ‘activités fractionelles’.15 The PCF remained firmly committed to these restrictive practicesin the following decades; thus, the ban on factional activity was intonated in the new constitution adopted in May 1979 at the twenty-third Congress.16 From (p.201) the very outset of the intraparty dispute in March 1978, the party leadership repeatedly accused its critics of engaging in factional activities. At the Central Committee session in late April, for example, Georges Marchais presented the objectives of the rebels in these terms, adding that their adoption by the leadership ‘conduirait le Parti à la liquidation’.17 The response of the critics to these repeated accusations of factional activity varied considerably in detail, but almost all intellectuals rejected the principle of independent organization within the PCF.18 In so doing, they were necessarily led to accept the key objective underlying theleadership's argument: the development of intra-party democracy could not be allowed to undermine the established principles of the institution. Since the critics eschewed any form of revisionism, their approach to the entire question ofinstitutional reform was marked by defensiveness and ambiguity. These sentiments immediately emerged

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A Party Like All Others? from a cursory examination of the public declarations of several leading dissidents during the intra-party dispute. In brief, there were three standard responses to the question of reforming the structures of the PCF's organization. The first (and arguably the most widespread) was, simply, to reject the very principle of factional activity out ofhand. For Gérard Molina and Yves Vargas, a distinction had to be drawn between ‘opinion currents’ and ‘factions’. The former were acceptable as a legitimate expression of the real intellectual diversity which existed in the counter-community, whereas the latter acted as a brake upon this diversity by transforming individual differences of opinion into formal cleavages.19 While the pertinence of this observation could not be denied, its authors signally failed to address such further questions as it immediately invited. Why were opinion currents (p.202) necessarily less divisivethan fully organized factions? After March 1978 the rebellious intellectuals were split intoat least three different groups,20 the mutual divisions and antagonisms of which were accentuated rather than reduced with the passage of time. The distinction drawn by Molina and Vargas also failed to recognize that opinion currents and factions could not be seen as part of the same continuum. Intellectual pluralism was a condition which would be achieved when different opinion currents were allowed to coexist in the counter-community. On the other hand, factions were a means of advancing towards the latter state of affairs. The intellectuals wouldpay a heavy price for this confusion of the final goal with the instrument of its achievement in the concluding stages of the intra-party dispute. The absence of any significant form of organized opposition in the counter-community would enable the PCF leadership to defeat its critics with consummate ease. In this sense, the failure of the critics' efforts to introduce genuine intellectual pluralism into the PCF was greatly facilitated by their refusal to face up to the practical implications of their activities after 1978. Another variant of this first type of response could be seen in the arguments deployed by Jean Rony to reject the principle of factional activity in the PCF. In contrast to Molina and Vargas, who belonged to the ‘Left’ of theintellectual opposition, Rony's general views were more attuned to the ‘Eurocommunist’ wing of the movement. Despite the wide gulf between these two groups over strategic and tactical questions, Rony's views on theissue of internal organization suggested that they were essentially united over this question. His argument for rejecting the principle of factionalism had an almost archaic flavour. While the extension of intellectual pluralism in the PCF wasto be welcomed, the existence of factions would prevent the party from effectively playing its ‘revolutionary’ role in French society—a role which required the highest degree of internal cohesion.21 Rony's argument, (p.203) it should be noted, flatly contradicted his earlier assertion that the PCF should reconsider its conception of vanguardism:22 nothing, after all, was more consistent with orthodox Leninism than the view thatthe party should present a monolithic face Page 6 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? to the external world. In fact, Rony's profession of faith in the valueof internal unity harked back to the rhetoric of the Thorezian era, when the PCF demanded (and generally obtained) unconditional loyalty from party intellectuals.23 This unresolved tension between the principles of political unity and intellectual diversity ultimately implied that the internal cohesion of the PCF was considered to be a more valuable good than the extension of pluralism in the countercommunity. Again, how such an ambiguous approach to the issue of pluralism played into the hands of the party leadership does not require much elaboration. The failure of intellectuals to address the logical implications of their own arguments enabled the authorities to preserve the organizational status quo. This, in turn, facilitated the isolation and eventual defeat of the internal rebellion. A second type of response to the problem of internal reform took a more positive approach to the question of intellectual pluralism, in the sense that it did not subordinate the value of diversity to other social and political goals. Thus Jacques Brière24 and Raymond Jean25 argued that the existing structure of the PCF denied the mass membership a voice in the decision-making process. Accordingly, they called for the introduction of ‘reforms’ to increase the party's pluralism at all levels. Rather significantly, however, they failed to specify the type of reforms they envisaged, or even whether the introduction of factions in the counter-community could contribute to their professed objective of making the PCF more pluralistic. Given the absence of further public declarations on their part, any explanation of this silence could only be speculative. Three reasons may be proffered. In the short term, these critics may have refrained from expressing their views fully on this issue for tactical reasons: on the one hand, so as not to be vulnerable to the leadership's charge of engaging in (p. 204) ‘liquidationist activities’; and, on the other, to preserve the relative unity of the internal opposition movement, where, as already noted, the necessity of factional activity was strongly disputed. It is also tempting to suggest that many of the critics, however sympathetically they might have considered the principle of factional activity, hesitated to franchir le pas in the face of considerations which were more self-regarding in nature. Some intellectuals were, by their own admission, temperamentally unsuitedto the kind of political activity required by membership of a factional group. As Raymond Jean, for example, admitted in an article written in 1980, he had always considered himself a ‘contestataire’ throughout his membership of the PCF:26 his rugged individualism was thus illsuited to the collective formalities of factional politics. A final problem was the constraint which any further form of political activism could impose upon the professional lives of the intellectuals. To take Raymond Jean, Professor of French Literature at the University of Aix-en-Provence, as our example, a commitment to engage in factional political activity would have entailed a considerable increase in the amount of time he would need to devote to la chose politique. It was far from clear, in his specific case, that such changes Page 7 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? could be accommodated without drastic amendments to his life-style. Thus, however intensely critics might have opposed the policies of the party leadership after March 1978, there were obvious physical limits to the time and energy they could afford to devote to the struggle for internal reform.27 From this perspective, there was a definite sense in which the intra-party dispute was a rather uneven contest, in which the professional politicians of the party leadership, armed with time and the formidable material resources of the permanent staff at the Place du Colonel Fabien, were manifestly in a much better position to determine the course of events than the contestataires, (p. 205) whose sole weapon was a deep-seated belief in the moral and intellectual validity of their cause. A third type of response to the question of institutional reform approached the issue of internal pluralism from a rather different perspective. Despite reaching diametrically opposing conclusions as to the desirability of factions in the PCF, the first and second approaches previously outlined at least shared the view that the extension of pluralism in the counter-community was primarily a structural matter, which could not be accomplished without the introduction of substantial (albeit rather ill-defined) institutional changes at all levels of the party. Other contestataires looked at the problem from a different angle. Arguing on the basis of his long experience in the party appareil, Henri Fiszbin contended that the extent of effective pluralism was inversely proportional to the level of command in the organization. At grass-root level, the scope for activists to discuss and participate in policy-making was extremely wide. Fiszbin even went so far as to state that the ‘caractère démocratique’ of this process was ‘sans équivalent dans aucun autre parti’.28 A totally different picture emerged, however, at the higher levels of the decision-making process: ‘Dès que la question est posée en termes d'accord ou de désaccord avec la direction du parti, beaucoup de camarades, qui sontpourtant prêts à exprimer telle ou telle inquiétude, préfèrent la taire et serrer les rangs. Plus on se trouve à un niveau élevé dans la hiérarchie du parti et plus la cohésion est de rigueur.’29 But the underlying problem could not be resolved by institutional manipulation. Ultimately, the conflict represented a tension between traditionalism and innovation in the minds of each party member: ‘C'est en chacun de nous que cohabitent ce qui tire enarrière et ce qui pousse en avant, ce qui est signe d'un passé non encore révolu et ce qui est signe d'un avenir non encore intégré.’30 This provocative proposition suggested that the problem of pluralism in the PCF would never be tackled effectively unless the peuple communiste as a whole confronted the unresolved tension between the principles of unity and diversity.31 In any (p.206) event, Fiszbin's approach went beyond standard analyses of the problem of internal reform offered by critical intellectuals. From his perspective, the legitimation of factional activity would not have provided an adequate solution. Indeed, Fiszbin could see no evidence to support the view that factional activity would resist the tradition of unity and cohesion which Page 8 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? existed at the higher reaches of the party. At a deeper level, however, he plainly believed that factions simply represented the formalization of political diversity. The real problem was the transformation of the mentality of the mass membership, in order to generate unqualified recognition of the intrinsic value of intellectual pluralism. Despite the comparatively wider approach taken by Fiszbin, his emphasis on reforming the hearts and minds of his fellow-party members, rather than attempting to change the structures of the party, naturally began to smack of idealism when confronted by the hard-headed approach taken by the PCF leadership. However pertinent Fiszbin's observations mighthave been for the analysis of the manière d'être of the average party member, they hardly offereda practical solution to the question of internal reform, and were even less helpful in providing critical intellectuals with a means of resisting the formidable assault launched by the PCF leaders against the internal opposition after 1979. Like many of the contestataires, Fiszbin initially appeared to have underestimated the sheer power which the leadership could wield in its struggle against the dissident intellectuals. Fiszbin's personal political trajectory over the following years showed, however, that he was not slow to realize the critical importance of vertical power relations in the counter-community. Increasingly marginalized within the appareil after the publication of Les Bouches s'ouvrent in April 1980, Fiszbin lost his seat in the Federal Committee of Paris in October 1980, after openly criticizing the precipitate designation of Georges Marchais as the PCF's candidate in the 1981 presidential elections. During the election campaign Fiszbin and his comrades prepared their counter-offensive, and in May 1981 he announced the formation of Rencontres Communistes, a ‘horizontal’ association within the countercommunity, equipped with its own weekly journal, Rencontres Communistes hebdo.32 As its title suggested, RCH (p.207) was an attempt to provide party members with a medium for developing further internal debates on central issues raised in the intra-party dispute. The party leadership, already shaken by the relatively poor performance of the General Secretary at the polls,33 reacted swiftly to crush this blatant challenge to its authority. A few weeks later, Fiszbin and a number of his associates (including François Hincker) were expelled by the Federal Committee,34 and this decision was confirmed at the Central Committee session of October 1981. As indicated in the Introduction, the impact of the Rencontres Communistes group on the internal life of the PCF was minimal during the 1980s. This was implicitly recognized by its leadersin 1988, when the movement as a whole merged with the Parti Socialiste. None the less, the creation of the Rencontres Communistes, and the expulsion of its twenty-nine founding members on grounds of ‘activités fractionelles’,35 were highly symbolic developments. The formation of an independent structure within the PCF was symptomatic of a qualitative change in the attitudes of many Page 9 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? dissident intellectuals. As already noted, critics of the party leadership initially showed few signs of recognizing the importance of structural reforms, either as a means of enhancing the level of pluralism within the counter-community, or even as an instrument of self-protection against the party machine. In effect, the general response of the intellectuals to the problem of factional activity ranged from rejection on grounds of principle, to suggestive but ambiguous allusions to the need for wider reforms in the counter-community. From this perspective, the formation of the Rencontres Communistes under the leadership of Henri Fiszbin represented a direct challenge to the prevailing institutional orthodoxy of the PCF. Like the owl of Minerva, however, it arrived post festum. An earlier, more united and more determined confrontation with the (p.208) party leadership over this issue would not necessarily, of course, have altered the outcome of the intra-party dispute. None the less, it is arguable that a more positive approach by the intellectuals from the outset would have kept the PCF leadership on the defensive—a position into which, as will be seen, the authorities were forced over other issues, notably the question of the nature of the PCF's links with the Soviet Union and with the international communist movement. In any event, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the critics did their own cause little good by evading the issue of structural reform until 1981. This suggested clearly that most of the rebels were unable to reconcile the tension between the search for greater democracy and the traditional value ascribed to the principle of internal unity. Ironically, by 1983 most intellectuals who were initially hostile (or at least ambivalent) towards the principle of factional activity in the PCF had radically reassessed their position on this issue. In January 1983 a petition was published in Rencontres Communistes hebdo supporting the claims of Rencontres Communistes for left-wing representation in the forthcoming municipal elections. It was signed by a significant number of current and former party members, as well as by sympathizers of the new association.36 Among the signatories were Gérard Molina, Jean Rony, and Jacques Brière. Mieux valait tard que jamais.

The Science of Leadership The centrality of the problem of intra-party democracy was recognized by the overwhelming majority of the mass membership of the PCF during the intraparty dispute. From this perspective, intellectuals were by no means alone in questioning the effectiveness of the party's organizational principles. Despite sharing this common concern with other social groups at the lower levels of the counter-community, however, the intellectuals' approach to the problem of intraparty democracy was distinctively different, in the sense of being more specifically related to the nature and extent of their own activities in the counter-community. This was (p.209) apparent in the debate over the party's principles of organization. While considerable interest was focused on the Page 10 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? process which distorted the collective contribution of all party members, the intellectuals were perhaps more centrally concerned with the outcome of this distortion, and its implications for their role in the policy-making process within the party. In other words, the rules and procedures of democratic centralism, which enabled the party leadership to impose its views on the grass roots, appeared less important in themselves than the ultimate principles which justified their existence. One of the key limitations of intra-party democracy within the PCF, according to the intellectuals, was the failure of the party leadership to take sufficient account of the political views of ordinary party members. As François Hincker noted: ‘Avoir une attitude scientifique, ce n'est certes pas réviser son attitude antérieure systématiquement et pour le plaisir, mais c'est être sans cesse disponible pour cette révision … c'est d'être disponible pour accueillir toute connaissance utile: mais s'il en est ainsi, c'est que le Parti n'est pas la source et la fin de tout…’37 From the intellectuals' point of view, the indispensable condition of any intellectual enquiry was that no participant could claim exclusive knowledge of all the answers. The major obstacle to the communication of ideas within the party, therefore, was the fact that the leadership saw itself as the ultimate standard and judge of political truth. This ‘scientific’ attribute of the party leadership was clearly regarded as the source of its power and legitimacy. By the same token, this exclusive knowledge of political truth was deemed to constitute the decisive obstacle to the development of genuine intra-party democracy. The following sections will examine the intellectuals' critique of the PCF's conception of ‘science’, in order to evaluate the extent to which this critique provoked a reassessment of their conception of Marxist theory. The Problematic of Science

The historical centrality of the problematic of ‘science’ in the theory and practice of French Communism can hardly be overstated. During the Stalinist era the PCF operated as a social institution (p.210) which ‘commanded’ (in all senses of the word) the loyalty of its members by virtue of embodying principles of belief and action which were construed to be ‘scientific’ and were thus accepted as authoritative.38 The extensive range of application of these principles toa broad spectrum of intellectual activities was one of the hallmarks of the high Stalinist decades of the 1940s and 1950s. The characteristic features of this period could be summarized as follows: a narrow set of criteria were used for defining the principles of legitimate action and belief, coupled with an extremely broad range of domains in which these principles were recognized to be operative. The criteria used by the party authorities to establish these guidelines were essentially political. The ‘objective’ interests of the French working class—as defined, naturally, by the leadership of the PCF—became the cornerstone of acceptable conduct by the party intellectual. As the sociologist Pierre Naville noted: ‘Les intellectuels staliniens comme intelligentsia, comme classe, Page 11 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? comme corps, ont une devise, un maître mot, une excuse, une justification, une étiquette, une manière d'être, une réponse à tout: ils se sont placés sur les positions de la classe ouvrière.’39 This crude criterion was rigorously applied to an extremely broad range of issues, both in the public and private domains. Since the objective interests of the proletariat could be known only by the party leadership, the internal mores of the PCF were both rigidly defined and scrupulously respected. Thus, the practical requirements of the intellectual's loyalty to his party were extremely (p.211) demanding. The orthodox party member was enjoined to defend, at all times and with extreme vigour, all the positions of the party: the practical implications of this principle could involve anything from proscribing newspapers such as Le Figaro to chanting anti-American slogans in cinema halls.40 Even more importantly, the party intellectual was expected to adopt this point de vue de classe in the course of exercising his professional activity. For example, the Circle of Communist Historians, established after 1945 to promote the study of the materialist conception of history, constantly defined its objectives with reference to the vicissitudes of the party line. Thus, the discipline was divided into a ‘bourgeois’ and a ‘scientific’ conception of history, and all works which did not subscribe unreservedly to the methodological principles of the Marxist approach were rejected out of hand. Even such historians of the Annales as Fernand Braudel, who were by no means unsympathetic to the Marxist problematic, were dismissed as ‘pro-Atlantic’ and ‘Americanophile’.41 The absurd lengths to which this Manichaean approach could be taken were fully illustrated by Jean Bruhat, Assistant Professor of History at the Sorbonne, who produced an article celebrating the remarkable contributions to historical scholarship made by party leader Maurice Thorez, ‘historien d'un type nouveau’.42 Similar genuflections towards the scientific value of Marxism to their respective disciplines were practised by philosophers and economists, but also by artists, poets, novelists, architects, and natural scientists—although it should be noted that some disciplines, such as psychoanalysis, were considered to be entirely beyond such redemption.43 Ultimately, therefore, this sectarian spirit in the PCF resulted in the application of schematic Marxist (p.212) criteria to an extensive range of creative intellectual activities, in the arts and sciences alike. After the end of the Cold War, however, both the principles defining the intellectual's conduct and the scope of their application underwent a process of gradual change. From the mid-1960s onwards this evolution could be characterized as an inversion of the previous dynamics of the phenomenon. On the one hand, the ‘political’ standards for evaluating the intellectual's legitimate actions and beliefs became increasingly more elastic. The monistic point de vue de classe of the Stalinist era ceased to be invoked as the overriding interpretative principle of assessment, and was replaced by a relatively less Page 12 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? dogmatic conception of Marxism, which at least implicitly recognized the critical dimension of the theory. In philosophy, for example, the dispute between Louis Althusser and Roger Garaudy over the merits of a ‘humanist’ conception of Marxism was arbitrated by the party leadership, at a special session of the Central Committee at Argenteuil in March 1966. In his keynote address General Secretary Waldeck Rochet argued in favour of an approach which could combine the conceptual rigour of the Althusserian method with the pluralistic political implications of Garaudy's works.44 This introduction of greater flexibility in the definition of the party's standards of evaluation did not, however, signify a legitimation of all approaches to political philosophy: ‘le rejet du dogmatisme, qui stérilise la recherche et la création, n'atténue pas la lutte contre l'abandon opportuniste de principes’.45 None the less, the Argenteuil session represented a landmark in the history of the PCF's rapports with its intellectuals. By stressing the intrinsic value of creative and critical thinking, it confirmed the party's gradual release from the static and instrumental conception of Marxism which had been the hallmark of the Stalinist era. By (p.213) the same token, these developments undermined the notion that Marxist theory could always provide a ‘scientific’ answer to all problems of political philosophy.46 This retreat from a monistic interpretation of Marxist principles was accompanied by a considerable reduction in the scope of their application. In other words, the party leadership no longer experienced the compulsion to prescribe absolute standards of belief and action in all domains of intellectual activity. From this perspective as well, the Argenteuil meeting was a milestone in the internal mores of the PCF. Intellectuals were informed that the party no longer intendedto impose rigid guidelines for the ‘correct’ Marxist approach in their respective disciplines. The distinction between a ‘bourgeois’ and a ‘scientific’ approach, therefore, became redundant in a wide range of intellectual activities, ranging from the natural sciences to literature and art. As the poet Louis Aragon stated in the final declaration adopted at the Argenteuil session: ‘La création artistique ne se conçoit pas … sans recherches, sans courants, sans écoles diverses et sans confrontations entre elles. Le parti apprécie et soutient les diverses formes de contribution des créateurs aux progrès humains dans le libre déploiement de leur imagination, leur goût et leur originalité.’47 In the final resolution of the Argenteuil meeting, accordingly, it was declared that ‘le Parti Communiste ne saurait contrarier ces débats ni apporter une vérité a priori, encore moins trancher de façon autoritaire des discussions non achevées entre spécialistes’.48 Although the scope of this principle of pensée libre was not (p.214) quite universal (the party leadership was still keen to exercise control over the direction of research in the social sciences49), the evolution of the PCF's conception of intellectual autonomy was unmistakable. The underlying trend in Page 13 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? this process of change could be described as the ‘decoupling’ of politics from the intellectual's domain of professional activity and competence—as long, as will be seen below, as this remained outside the immediate sphere of politics. The Science of Politics

The historical process described above shows that the range of intellectual activities in which the PCF claimed the right to prescribe absolute standards of belief and action narrowed considerably after the end of the Cold War. It remains the case, however, that the PCF's discourse never fully laid the ghost of ‘science’ to rest. One of the areas in which the party continued to claim exclusive property of this scientific knowledge was the sphere ofpolitics.50 In this section the different manifestationsof this claim will be examined, in order to assess their implications for the role of intellectuals in the counter-community. The PCF's repeated proclamations of the ‘scientific’ character of its policy could be described inthree distinct dimensions. At one level of analysis, the PCF defined its policy as the expression of the democratic will of the mass membership. When the party asserted that its policies were ‘scientific’, it was logically committed to the view that this attribute was the direct product of the application of the principles of democratic centralism.51 What gave party pronouncements a scientific quality, therefore, was the nature of the process which transformed the voice of the grass roots into (p.215) official policy: vox populi, vox scientiae. This ‘procedural’ conception of science, although implicit in official pronouncements of the PCF on its internal decision-making procedures, was rarely emphasized in party discourse. One important reason for this relative neglect was the greater utility of the concept of science in providing the ultimate justification for two forms of authority: the internal power of the party leadership over the mass membership, as well as the external authority of the PCF over competing political formations. During the Stalinist period the ‘cult of the personality’ (and, by extension, of the party leadership as a whole) was essentially founded on the premiss of omniscience of the groupe dirigeant. Gérard Belloin evoked this direct association between leadership and absolute knowledge in the following terms: ‘Ilis étaient dirigeants parce qu'ils savaient, et ils savaient parce qu'ils étaient dirigeants.’52 But it would be a mistake to ascribe this legitimacy solely to the vertical structure of power which governed the counter-community. Ultimately, the scientific quality of a political principle or policy was not determined by the identity of those who proclaimed its existence, but by the nature of the theory which informed the proclamation. In the official discourse of the PCF, party leaders were merely instrumental in providing the mass membership with ‘scientific’ knowledge: the real subject and original source of this process was Marxist theory. Thus, the ultimate foundation of the assertion that the PCF was the repository of scientific knowledge of society lay in the fact that party leaders were guided by a philosophical method which was uniquely qualified to render Page 14 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? the social and political system intelligible. As party leader Maurice Thorez stated in emphatic terms: ‘Le matérialisme historique … a permis non seulement de comprendre le passé, mais d'influer sur l'avenir. La doctrine scientifique de Marx-Engels-Lénine-Staline, la théorie révolutionnaire du Marxisme-Léninisme est une boussole permettant defixer à coup sûr la route de la classe ouvrière.’53 Although this unbridled optimism was moderated to some (p.216) extent in subsequent decades, it should be noted that the substance of the PCF's faith in the heuristic properties of Marxist theory was not seriously eroded. An emphatic statement of this continuing belief was provided in an article written (for mass consumption) by philosopher Guy Besse for L'Humanité in 1977: ‘Si le parti communiste renonçait au socialisme scientifique … la classe ouvrière serait en droit de lui demander des comptes … Renoncer à notre théorie ne serait pas rapprocher l'heure du socialisme, mais revenir un siècle et demi en arrière, avant le Manifeste du Parti Communiste, quand l'avant-garde révolutionnaire tâtonnait dans les brumes de l'utopie’.54 The problematic of ‘science’, therefore, continued to provide an important justification of the authority of the party leadership inside the counter-community. Official party intellectuals, furthermore, continued to stress the distinctiveness of the PCF in terms of the inherent superiority of its theoretical instruments. In an article published in 1980, for example, the historian Roger Martelli announced that party intellectuals had now rejected the schematic conception of Marxist theory which prevailed in the era of Thorez and Stalin. The closed universe of ‘Marxism-Leninism’ could no longer provide the key to the hidden treasures of scientific knowledge. But, Martelli added, ‘il serait toutefois malséant de méconnaître l'incontestable ferment d'originalité que constitue cette volonté, propre au P.C.F., de disposer d'une autbentique connaissance qui, par son sérieux et sa compléxité, permette … la maîtrise consciente par les hommes de leurs relations politiques et des rapports sociaux’.55 The author implicitly recognized that the PCF had not quite achieved total knowledge of the social and political system. The direct implication, however, was that this desirable objective was within the party's grasp. Once achieved, this ‘scientific’ understanding of reality wouldenable the PCF to regulate the social system to the best interests of society. Despite the slight modification in the terminology used by Martelli, it was hard not to view his statement (p.217) as the latter-day equivalent of the Thorezian credo in the explanatory and predictive properties of Marxist theory. This conception of Marxism as the central instrument for explaining the social and political system still occupied a key position in the mental universe of most Communist intellectuals in the 1970's. Two examples, chosen from André Harris and Alain de Sédouy's Voyage à l'intérieur du Parti Communiste, will suffice to illustrate this proposition. Discussing his reaction to the events of May 1968, party economist Philippe Herzog contrasted the theoretical coherence of the Page 15 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? PCF's representation of the social and political situation with the ‘pagaïe intellectuelle’56 which characterized the positions of the non-communist Left. Faced with a chaotic situation which departed from all established conventions, therefore, Herzog sought and found guidance in the principles of orthodox Marxism (i.e. the official PCF line on the May events). A comparable intellectual trajectory was followed by journalist Jean-Pierre Gaudard. Tormented throughout hisadolescence by scepticism, he experienced a sense of intellectual liberation after his encounter with Marxism: ‘Le Marxisme est apparu comme quelque chose de bien construit, d'agréable … Oui, intellectuellement, cela tourne rond, le Marxisme. C'est satisfaisant.’57 These two cases illustrated the sustained interest of Communist intellectuals in the heuristic properties of Marxist theory. As the intra-party dispute developed, however, critical intellectuals increasingly focused on the PCF leadership's instrumental conception of this explanatory dimension of Marxism. The problematic of ‘science’ did not appear as a method of elucidating social reality, but simply as a convenient instrument for preserving the authority of the party leadership. This intellectual critique of the scientific pretensions of the PCF leaders will be examined in the following section. Scientific expertise as an instrument of authority

The immediate and most widespread source of intellectual dissatisfaction with the PCF leadership stemmed from the party's official interpretation of the causes of the defeat of the Left in (p.218) the legislative elections of March 1978. The declaration of the Politburo on 20 March, which directly blamed the electoral defeat on the Socialists, categorically affirmed that ‘le P.C.F. ne porte aucune responsabilité dans cette situation’.58 Towards the end of the month this version of events was repeated by Charles Fiterman at a meeting of federal party secretaries. A week later the Politburo further proclaimed: ‘C'est dans cette stratégie désastreuse et suicidaire [du Parti Socialiste] et nulle part ailleurs que réside la cause directe du fait que la gauche n'est pas parvenue à la victoire.’59 At the April plenary session of the Central Committee, finally, party leader Georges Marchais reaffirmed the PCF's official conception of the Socialists as the ennemi public numéro un. Many in the party were shocked by the air of complacency and self-satisfaction with which the party leadership seemed to have accepted the defeat of the Left. François Hincker, although still a member of the Central Committee at this stage, aptly summarized the feelings of the mass membership: ‘Nous attendions de la direction de notre parti … qu'elle eut cette sensibilité populaire élémentaire de dire qu'un coup très grave avait été porté aux travailleurs, aux jeunes, à l'espoir. Et nousla vîmes froide, soulagée, satisfaite que le Parti ait consolidé ses positions.’60 This cavalier attitude significantly enhanced the widespread impression that the PCF had willingly scuttled the Union de la Gauche as a means of preserving its relative strength and arresting the electoral ascendancy of the Socialist Party. Page 16 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? The emphatic and repeated denials of the party leadership, coupled with its refusal to grant its critics access to the party press, provoked the intellectuals to focus on the sources of the PCF's insistence that its policy had been correct. This gradually led to a generalized critique of the party leadership's pretensions to a superior level of knowledge to that of the mass membership. Many intellectuals did not necessarily disapprove of the substance of the PCF's policy towards the Socialists. As Raymond Jean noted, the PCF might have had legitimate grounds for breaking off the alliance with the Socialists before March 1978. But these reasons had to be known (p.219) to (and endorsed by) the mass membership of the party. It was unacceptable for the leadership to have kept such a decision entirely in its own hands.61 The opening salvo was fired in a petition signed by a group of dissident intellectuals and published in Le Monde in early April 1978. These critics62 considered the claim that the political strategy followed by the party leadership had been correct as an ‘affirmation autoritaire’63 which did not stand up to close examination. This theme was subsequently taken up by one of the signatories, Louis Althusser, in a series of articles published in the same newspaper a few weeks later. ‘Ce qui ne peut plus durer dans le Parti Communiste’ was nothing less than a wholesale attack on the numerous failings of the PCF, both from a strategic and institutional point of view. Althusser argued that the anti-Socialist policy of the PCF from 1977 had stemmed from a strategic about-turn which had been concealed from the mass membership. The heart of the problem was not the nature and extent of such a concealment, however, but rather its fundamental rationale. The party leadership had acted in this secret manner because it could not trust the ‘political maturity’ of the mass membership. Since ordinary party activists could not be depended upon to reach ‘correct’ political conclusions, the Politburo had taken it upon itself to think on their behalf. This belief in the inherent superiority of its knowledge of the political world, therefore, was the distinctive attribute of the PCF leadership, which, in Althusser's words, ‘détenait non seulement le pouvoir de commander aux hommes, mais le pouvoir de commander à la vérité, en fonction d'une ligne qu'elle avait fixée toute seule’.64 The implacable conclusion of the enfant terrible of the party was clear: the policies of the PCF were not derived from a creative interpretation of Marxist theory, but from an ‘idéologic du parti’ whose sole purpose was to ‘cimenter à n'importe quel prix l'unité du parti autour [de la] direction’.65 Althusser's challenge to the principles underlying the internal (p.220) authority of the PCF leadership was the prelude to a wide-ranging critique of the scientific pretensions of the party hierarchy. At the lower levels of the party organization, rank-and-file members frequently echoed the substance of the charges levelled in the polemical articles of Le Monde. The following quote from a letter written by two young party intellectuals from Nice and addressed to Michel Barak, the organizer of the ‘Aix-en-Provence’ petition, perfectly illustrated the point: ‘le rôle Page 17 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? d'intellectuel collectif du Parti est réduit si ce n'est nié. L'insuffisante politisation et la faiblesse théorique s'accompagne d'une interprétation schématique des principaux textes que l'on entoure de fétichisme religieux; répercussion la plus courante: nos dirigeants ont toujours raison. Sous-entendu: ils ont le savoir, eux.’66 The political implications of this attitude were twofold. On the one hand, official party discourse notwithstanding, it was entirely misleading to regard the PCF as the mouthpiece of the proletariat. As Jean Rony noted, the party's self-definition as the parti de la classe ouvrière was nothing less than a ‘dénégation de laréalité’.67 In classic Leninist fashion, the PCF had replaced the class whose political interests it claimed to represent. The paradox of the organization, in this sense, was that the PCF had been eminently successful in providing the proletariat with an instrument for intervening in the political arena. At the lower levels of the party structure, the voice of the working class was clearly more audible than in any comparable political association. But the leadership's belief in the superiority of its political knowledge meant that this proletarian voice could have no impact on political output.68 Thus, the party's credentials as the political vanguard of the French proletariat were spurious. In analogous fashion, Jacques Brière argued that the effectiveness of a vanguard organization depended on the intimacy of its social and political links with the working class. The PCF, however, had divorced itself from the social class whose cause it purported to champion, primarily because of the leadership's claims to ‘une connaissance totale’69 of the social and political (p.221) universe. Brière, unlike Althusser, did not believe that the PCF's pretension to scientific knowledge was exclusively an instrument of authority. The problem, in his view, stemmed from the leadership's genuine belief in Marxism as the ‘science des sciences’ which could make social reality completely intelligible. Leaving aside the question of intentionality, the effects of this attitude were no different from those denounced in Althusser's articles. Indeed, the PCF was committed to a rather sophistical position. Since party policies were essentially derived from this ‘scientific’ understanding of social reality, the failure of the overwhelming majority of the French people to support the PCF could in no way be ascribed to the nature of these policies. The only logical explanation was that the masses had failed to recognize the virtues of Marxist science.70 The PCF's continuing attachment to the problematic of ‘science’, therefore, served to protect party policy from critical scrutiny, and, in a broader sense, prevented the organization from developing a genuine understanding of social and political reality.

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A Party Like All Others? Totalitarian undertones

A more menacing political implication of the PCF's belief in the scientific quality of its policies could be derived from these arguments. So long as the question of science served either to justify the authority of the leadership or to distort the PCF's representation of social reality, the party was simply corroding its ability to act as the political vanguard of the working class. This was undeniably a serious impediment, but at least it did not have apositively deleterious impact on society. But if the leadership believed that it was the sole repository of political truth, and if the PCF were in a position to exercise hegemonic power over society, the party's ‘scientific’ understanding of society could be used to execute and justify morally reprehensible actions. Indeed, as long as the PCF was committed to the holistic framework of Marxist theory, and hence believed that human action had to be directed towardsa certain telos, the party would almost necessarily be inclined to impose its conception of ‘the good’ on society. As Antoine Spire mused: ‘Comment avoir une vue totalisante de (p.222) la réalité sociale qui ne soit pas totalitaire?’71 The belief that Marxism could provide a ‘connaissance totale de l'ensemble du réel’,72 therefore, could have a number of sinister social ramifications, particularly since its justificatory grounds for political action were altruistic rather than self-regarding. The PCF's stated objective, as Gérard Belloin put it, was to ‘faire le bonheur des autres’:73 a similarly disinterested purpose had informed the actionsof earlier generations of Communists, with often tragic consequences for the societies in which they lived.74 The ‘science’ of Marxism was not only an unreliable instrument for interpreting the world (in the sense of rendering it totally intelligible): it also, and perhaps especially, represented a dangerous intellectual vehicle for changing it. However, the number of party intellectuals who reached similar conclusions concerning the totalitarian implications of Marxist theory (and, by logical extension, PCF political practice) remained relatively low throughout the intraparty dispute. There were, arguably, two principal causes for this lack of (public) intellectual concern with this problem. The first reason arose from the very nature of the debate which placed the question of Marxist ‘science’ on the intellectuals' agenda. The essential thrust of the criticism levelled at the PCF leadership was directed at the latter's use of the concept of science as a means of justifying its internal authority over the mass membership. The immediate preoccupation of intellectuals, in other words, was the way in which the PCF legitimized the relative absence of internal democracy within the countercommunity by invoking its superior knowledge in the political domain. This inward-looking focus naturally stood in the way of a closer examination of the equally important (but somewhat more remote) question ofhow the PCF leadership would act in the event of its accession to governmental office.75

Page 19 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? Furthermore, it might be argued that dominant ideological trends in the French intellectual community actively prevented party intellectuals from exploring this question of the totalitarian (p.223) implications of Marxism. By the mid-1970s it was becoming increasingly apparent that Marxist thought was beginning to lose its hold on the French intellectual community. The process of fundamental re-evaluation of Marxist theory had numerous political ramifications, some of which will be addressed later. One important aspect of this process, however, was the development of a vigorous (albeit rather confused) critique of Marxism in French philosophical circles, which was given the title of nouvelle philosophie.76 Although this movement had a relatively ephemeral existence, and was effectively out of fashion by the early 1980s, its principal authors attracted considerable attention in the late 1970s. Significantly enough, the central theme of the nouveaux philosophes was the inescapable link between Marxist theory and various forms of political authoritarianism in modern times. In Tony Judt's succinct summary, ‘This new mood saw a return of the perennial French intellectual self-obsession, with André Glucksmann, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Régis Debray and others packaging Marx, Sartre, Hegel, Nietzsche, Althusser, Stalin, and a ragtag list of obscure French pedagogues into a single commodity labelled “totalitarianism”, the self-generating source of three generations of crimes and mystifications.’77 Not surprisingly, the official reaction of the PCF to the emergence of this philosophical current was overwhelmingly hostile. In rather typical fashion, for example, L'Humanité brutally accused these new maître penseurs of serving the interests of the Giscardian bourgeoisie.78 This was a good example of source denigration, the critique of the totalitarian implications of Marxist theory being directly identified with social and political forces which were inherently hostile to the PCF.79 This effectively made it almost impossible for Communist intellectuals (p.224) to tread the same terrain after 1978. This was another telling illustration of the manner in which the PCF and ‘its’ critics shared a number of common assumptions about the origins and consequences of intellectual arguments, despite the development of internal opposition within the counter-community. In the previous chapter it was shown that the critics were somewhat hesitantto condemn the PCF's traditional practice of evaluating intellectual arguments from an instrumental rather than an intrinsic perspective. In practice, this tradition meant that the nature of the argument itself was only a secondary (and often irrelevant) factor in the process of evaluation. What was deemed to be infinitely more important was the social or political identity of the author of the argument, as well as the medium in which it was expressed. Even in the 1970s this schematic procedure was frequently deployed by the PCF as a means of disqualifying intellectual arguments. This was broughthome with some force to the left-wing weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, when its editors challenged the Communists to adopt a more critical attitude towards political repression in the Soviet Union.80 Ultimately, the arguments of the nouveaux philosophes were Page 20 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? subjected to a similar form ofintellectual indignity. Thus, it was hardly surprising that party intellectuals showed little inclination to adopt their approach. Openly to flout party rules and conventions governing the communication of ideas within the counter-community was one thing; to borrow arguments from the intellectual artillery of inveterate enemies of the PCF was quite another. Even dissident Communist intellectuals could come to support the view that there were times when le linge sale se lave en famille. In sum, the party intellectuals' critical evaluation of the problem of ‘science’ in the PCF did not develop far beyond an attack on the party leadership's instrumental appropriation of Marxist theory to justify and legitimize its authority in the counter-community. Most of the contestataires, however, retained a strong belief in the inherent superiority of Marxist theory as an unrivalled instrument (p.225) for ordering and classifying the social universe. Ironically, this schematic conception of Marxism would not have been disowned by the party authorities themselves. As with their view of the working class and the principle of factional activity, the Communist intellectuals' conception of Marxism again demonstrated the extent to which they continued to identify with the basic norms and values of the counter-community. At the same time, this enduring ideological disposition also reflected the essential isolation of the PCF from the wider community of French intellectuals, who, as noted earlier, had already rejected the political and heuristic value of Marxism.

The Resilience of Party Patriotism The arguments outlined above demonstrate the extent to which the critical intellectuals became disillusioned with the PCF as a vanguard organization. Instead of providing, in the words of Maurice Goldring, a political framework ‘pour que la classe ouvrière joue un rôle de partenaire égal avec les autres forces politiques et sociales’,81 the PCF had consciously pervertedits internal procedures for collective deliberation and decision-making to serve the immediate political ends of its leaders. The arrogant pretension of the party hierarchy to exclusive property of scientific knowledge in the political domain provided the ultima ratio for the denial of democracy within the countercommunity. Thus, the quality of internal life in the PCF was vitiated by the leadership's use of ‘science’ to justify its authority over the mass membership. More fundamentally, perhaps, this suppression of critical arguments directly threatened the raison d'être of intellectuals in the party. Given the character of their professional activity, intellectuals naturally attached considerable importance to the expression and communication of ideas in the countercommunity. In Raymond Jean's words: ‘Nous écrivons, [nous] nous exprimons publiquement, parce que c'est notre métier que de nous exprimer publiquement. Nous saisissons, au Parti comme ailleurs, les courants qui se manifestent dans un groupe, et nous les transformons en discours.’82 It was precisely this critical (p.226) dimension of intellectual activity which appeared to be threatened with redundancy as the intra-party dispute gathered momentum after March 1978. As Page 21 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? Maurice Goldring noted, the intellectuals werebeing denied the right to assume the tribunitial role which they felt supremely qualified to exercise.83 Despite the great obstacles that most critical intellectuals encountered in exercising their political activities in the counter-community after March 1978, it was extremely revealing that hardly any of the active participants considered abandoning the PCF during the first two years of the intra-party dispute. In one sense, this could be attributed to the intellectuals' continuing perception of its uncertain outcome. During this period most of the critics remained actively committed to changing the fundamental direction of party policy. Until the end of 1979, at least, many continued to believe that their activities would meet with some success. The erratic and sometimes brutal fluctuations in the PCF's official strategy in 1978 and 1979 created the impression that the course of party policy was not as yet firmly charted, and was still open to revisionist influence by the intellectuals. However, there were some exceptions to this general rule. A brief examination of one such case should provide a good example of a type of reasoning which had little in common with the approach immediately adopted by most intellectuals. Alexandre Adler, one of the contributors to the collective opus L'URSS et nous,84 resigned from the PCF in the summer of 1980. An active member of the PCF since 1970, he typified the generation of intellectuals who had joined the party in the wake of the dynamique unitaire of the Left, which resulted in the signature of the Programme commun in 1972. In his view, this fulfilment of leftwing unity was the culmination of a patient strategy followed since 1964 by party leader Waldeck Rochet, whose objective had been to transform the PCF into ‘le moteur d'un large mouvement majoritaire en France’.85 Since 1979, however, the PCF appeared to have abandoned this perspective in the interests of preserving its relative strength and cohesiveness. Given that his own membership of the party had been based primarily on the (p.227) development of a broad alliance of the Left, Adler inferred that ‘je n'ai actuellement aucun point d'accord avec la stratégie du Parti communiste’.86 Although still considering himself a communist, he strongly rejected what he described as ‘le fétichisme des organisations’, which essentially assumed that radical political action could be conducted effectively only under the umbrella of powerful associations such as the Communist Party. This form of reasoning was nothing less than a ‘trahison intellectuelle’, and his conclusion was quite categorical: ‘Il me semble sans intérêt de conserver une carte et de payer des timbres si ce geste n'est pas accompagné d'une capacité raisonnable de faire de la politique dans l' organisation dont on est membre.’87 This reaction, it should be noted, clearly implied that Adler's affiliation to the PCF was primarily a function of practical political considerations. As argued in Chapter 2, many intellectuals' active participation in the internal life of the counter-community was predicated upon the belief that the PCF provided the Page 22 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? most effective instrument for introducing radical political change in France. In a sense, these intellectuals' relationship with the partyassumed a quasicontractual character. To a considerable extent, membership of the party was stripped of the metaphysical trappings with which earlier generations of Communist intellectuals had been encumbered. Few intellectuals, however, followed Adler in making their affiliation to the PCF depend exclusively on the extent of their agreement with its current political strategy. The existence of alternative (and sometimes complementary) dimensions of identification with the party initially acted as an effective brake upon the intellectuals' inclination to sever all links with the counter-community. This chapter will be concluded by focusing on the considerations which kept a significant proportion of the critics inside the party during the first two years of the intra-party dispute, despite their growing disillusionment with its performance as a vanguard organization. The absence of alternatives to the PCF

The first question critical party intellectuals had to consider was whether there was an obvious alternative to the PCF in the French (p.228) political system. During the first two years of the intra-party dispute, however, as the Left licked its wounds in the wake of its defeat in the legislative elections of March 1978, there appearedto be few institutional substitutes readily available to Communist intellectuals. The other main party of the Left, the Parti Socialiste, neither did nor could at the time offer a haven for the dissident intellectuals. Membership of the PS was hardly an attractive proposition at a time when the critics' prime goal remained the internal transformation of the Communist Party. The intellectuals' self-definition as ‘communistes en action, et se réclamant d'un communisme au sens premier’,88 indicated that the party counter-community remained the chosen terrain for the conduct of their struggle. But even if the political objectives of the dissident intellectuals had been different, the appeal of the Socialist Party would not have been significantly greater. At a subjective level, most party intellectuals still believed that the PS was simply a ‘reformist’ (or ‘social-democratic’) organization, which had little interest in promoting radical political change in France.89 Attitudes towards the left-wing faction of the Socialist Party, the CERES (Centre d'Études, de Recherches, et d'Éducation Socialistes), alternated between feelings of condescension and contempt for a group which subscribed to the principles of orthodox Marxism, and yet was dominated by middle-class intellectuals. Most Communist intellectuals, therefore, largely agreed with François Mitterrand's scathing description of CERES as a ‘faux parti communiste’ controlled by ‘de vrais petits-bourgeois’. The PS seemed to lack the titres de noblesse to compete on equal terms with the PCF for the attention of the rebellious intellectuals. It might be added that, even if the critics had felt greater empathy with the political objectives of the Socialist Party, conditions for approaching the organization were anything but propitious in the years which immediately followed the electoral defeat of the Left in 1978. Indeed, the Socialists were Page 23 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? beginning to indulge in rather Byzantine interfactional warfare, with leaders of differentinternal groups locked in a desperate struggle to gain control of the party before (p.229) the 1981 presidential elections.90 The acrimonious tone in which these arguments were conducted would, at best, have reminded the intellectuals of the recent atmosphere in their own counter-community. This, it will be granted, could hardly be described as a satisfactory basis for joining a political organization. Surviving attachments

The intellectuals' initial desire to remain inside the PCF should not be reduced, however, to negative political considerations of the kind mentioned above. It would be misleading to suggest that the critics stayed in the party only because they could not find an appealing institutional alternative. Many of them naturally felt rather helplessat the thought of suddenly confronting the outside world. The counter-community continued to offer forms of social interaction (as well as a sentiment of collective purpose) which exercised an overriding appeal to the intellectuals' affective emotions. As Françhise Bouillot and Jean-Michel Devesa readily admitted: ‘sortir du parti, c'est se condamner à l'impuissance’.91 To a very significant extent, party dissidents continued to regard the PCF as a parti pas comme les autres, an organization which was uniquely endowed with the attributes required for introducing radical change in France. This was ultimately the belief which underlay the simple but forceful affirmation of Maurice Goldring: ‘Je veux rester a l'intérieur.’92 This belief could be supported by two different (but not mutually exclusive) types of argument. For some intellectuals, the PCF's supreme qualification for promoting radical change was primarily based upon the continuing identificationof the French proletariat with the party. To quote Bouillot and Devesa again: ‘rien ne changera en France sans le P.C., outil que se sont donnés les travailleurs’.93 The political errors of the party leadership could do nothing to alter the incontrovertible nature of the PCF's working-class identity. As long, therefore, as (some) French (p.230) workers continued to support the party, the PCF provided the only hope for the effective transformation of society. By the same token, the party remained the only possible focus of identification for intellectuals who shared this political objective. This argument was not particularly original: as noted in Chapter 5, Sartre had based his ralliement to the PCF on considerations of a similar nature during his fellow-travelling phase, between 1952 and 1956. The intellectual whose abiding loyalty to the party depended upon this type of reasoning was, none the less, faced witha rather obvious problem. If the argument was taken to its logical conclusion, no contingent occurrence could effectively disqualify the PCF from intellectual consideration. The party could err nominally, but its real essence was such that the committed intellectual had no alternative but to support its actions in the final analysis. The implication of Page 24 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? this absurd form of reasoning was clearly spelled out by Henri Fiszbin: ‘Il vaut mieux se tromper tous ensemble que de se couper ou s'isoler de la seule force capable de faire naître un nouveau monde.’94 Thus, the vanguardist ideal which the PCF continued to represent acted as a brake upon the development of centrifugal tendencies within the countercommunity. Earlier generations of Communist intellectuals had often used a similar form of reasoning to overcome their doubts when the party's position over a specific issue proved indigestible. The novelist André Stil, for example, recalled his growing sense of identification with the PCF in the years which immediately preceded the outbreak of the Second World War. His attraction to the party was not based on the particular policies it followed at the time, but on what the PCF essentially represented in his eyes: the only organization which effectively defended the interests of the French proletariat. The signature of the Nazi—Soviet pact in 1939 did not turn Stil away from the PCF: ‘Il faut savoir être avec ceux qui ont raison, même quand ils ont tort. On peut avoir fondamentalement raison et à certains moments avoir tort.’95 Despite the historical pedigree of this form of reasoning, however, another significant dimension of the preservation of intellectual affiliation to the PCF should not be overlooked. While the notion of the vanguard of the French (p.231) proletariat provided a concrete (if at times somewhat idealized) focus for the intellectual's continuing loyalty to the PCF, there also existed a separate dimension of identification which was so intrinsically abstract as to assume an almost ethereal quality. Philosophical optimism

For some intellectuals, indeed, the object of identification was neither the proletariat nor the party as actually constituted, but rather the teleological process which gave ultimate meaning to these social and political structures. Communist intellectuals almost naturally inclined towards the view that history had a rational purpose, as this was one of the cardinal principles of historical materialism. It should be noted, however, that some intellectuals internalized this principle to such an extent as to make their affiliation to the PCF exclusively dependent upon their belief in the rationality of the historical process. The example of André Wurmser is, in this respect, quite illuminating. A bourgeois intellectual who gravitated towards the PCF in the era of the Popular Front, Wurmser dedicated his life topromoting and defending the Communist ideal in the party press96 until his death in April 1984. His orthodoxy with regard to the party line was generally irreproachable, although he did undergo a brief phase of Angst in the immediate aftermath of Khrushchev's secret speech at the twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956.97 Unlike his colleague André Stil, however, Wurmser based his continuing attachment to communism on a philosophical vision which viewed the party and the proletariat as instruments of a greater historical design. From this rather Page 25 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? elevated perspective, the errors and crimes committed in the name of socialism naturally appeared as insignificant jolts in humanity's seamless march towards reason. The Stalin phenomenon in the Soviet Union required no explanation: Wurmser's duty as a journalist was simply to ‘donner conscience du mouvement de l'Histoire’.98 Reviewing a (p.232) number of cases of party intellectuals who had been victimized by the PCF, Wurmser showed nothing but contempt for those who decided to quit the party. Their only destiny was to become ‘des objets de curiosité… pour le Tout-Paris une bonne quinzaine de jours’.99 The battlelines were clearly drawn, as far as he was concerned, and the promise of eternity was eminently preferable to the ephemeral notoriety which was within any intellectual's grasp. ‘Il faut choisir’.100 The intellectual mechanism which enabled a member of the PCF to maintain his affiliation to the party by appealing to such transcendental considerations was obviously impervious to empirical refutation. Faith in the ultimate rationality of the historical process was not open to the type of confirmation required by those intellectuals whose loyalty to the PCF depended on practical political considerations. For this reason, it was extremely rare to find intellectuals of this kind abandoning the party, however intense their political disagreements with the PCF. This may be illustrated by the cases of two well-known party intellectuals, both of whom participated in the intra-party dispute after 1978. The first was Jean Bruhat, a party veteran who joined the PCF in 1925, during his student days at the École Normale Supérieure. Bruhat stated in his memoirs that his affiliation to the party was based on his ‘adhésion à une conception du monde’.101 As a historian, as noted earlierin this chapter, he frequently collaborated with the PCF press throughout his long career, and particularly distinguished himself during the Stalinist era by his unswerving adhesion to the party line. Like many hardened Stalinists who remained inside the PCF, however, Bruhat became a fervent advocate of greater internal liberalization after 1956. After the defeat of the Left in March 1978 he was immediately critical of the tactics adopted by the party leadership, and thus signed the petition sponsored by the Duclos cell at the University of Aix-en-Provence.102 From this point, his oppositional activities did not abate until his death in 1983. In 1980 he wrote a favourable review of Henri Fiszbin's Les Boucbes s'ouvrent in (p.233) Le Monde.103 In the following year he supported the initiative of a number of dissident communists, organized by Étienne Balibar and Georges Labica, who began the publication of the oppositional journal Union dans les luttes.104 In an article published in early 1982 Bruhat even went so far as to make this sacrilegious (and premonitory) suggestion: ‘On peut même se demander si le concepte de parti n'apparaît pas aujourd'hui périmé.’105 Despite the heretical nature of his activities after 1978, Bruhat never really faced up to the idea of resigning his party membership. His political vision was too deeply imbued with the materialist conception of history to allow him to abandon the PCF, even when he came to believe that the party as it was then could make no effective Page 26 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? contribution to the process of political change in France. Despite its predicament, the PCF was, by its very nature, inextricably associated with the process of social and political change in the international system. This worldhistorical process would ultimately sow the seeds of the movement's regeneration: this made the continuation of the intellectual's support for the PCF all the more necessary. Bruhat's intellectual ‘optimisme’106 thus survived the trials and tribulations of the intra-party dispute, and provided him with a firm (albeit somewhat idealistic) basis for retaining his membership of the PCF. A similar form of reasoning may be discerned in the approach adopted by another historian, Michel Vovelle, during the various stages of the intra-party dispute. Unlike his colleague Bruhat, Vovelle was never stricto sensu an ‘intellectuel de parti’, in the sense that his reputation as a historian did not depend exclusively on the audience he could command within the countercommunity. In fact, almost all his professional activity was exercised in academic institutions such as the University of Aix-en-Provence and the Sorbonne, where he became the seventh holder of the Chair of the History of the French Revolution in 1983. Vovelle rarely published partisan articles in the Communist press, and was never, like Bruhat, a regular collaborator at the PCF's historical (p.234) research institutes.107 Despite this relative segregation of his political and professional activity, Vovelle was a committed member of the PCF, who never shied away from publicizing his support for the party.108 After the defeat of the Left in 1978, Vovelle added his name to the Aix-enProvence petition, evidence of his general hostility to the political strategy adopted by the PCF. Given his total disagreement with the party line, the absence of firm institutional links with fellow historians in the party, and his general lack of substantive interaction with the counter-community, he might have been expected to drift away from the PCF. In fact, he remained firmly entrenched in the semi-oppositional position he had adopted in the immediate aftermath of 1978. He publicly endorsed Georges Marchais's candidature in 1981, and again agreed to support his increasingly beleaguered party's official list in the 1984 European elections.109 His reason for staying inside the PCF was as luminously simple as the one proffered by Jean Bruhat. In an interview given in 1979 Vovelle argued that he could never bring himself to leave the party, on the grounds of his ‘confiance dans le mouvement de l'Histoire’.110 This singular faith in the curative properties of the historical process enabled him to overcome his doubts as to the continuing viability of the organization. He was thus able, to use a typical formula of the PCF, to retain his membership of the party long after ‘objective’ circumstances had ceased to warrant such an affiliation. This chapter set out to identify the extent to which the intellectuals' conception of the nature of their attachment to the PCF was altered by the onset of the intra-party dispute. At the end of this analysis, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the elements of continuity clearly prevailed over change. The Page 27 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? intellectuals (p.235) criticized the failings of intra-party democracy, but failed to advance an alternative conception of political organization which was genuinely pluralistic. Although the critics rejected the PCF's instrumental conception of Marxism, their own approach shared the same presuppositions as the party leadership with regard to the heuristic potential of the theory. Finally, despite the intellectuals' oft-repeated desire to see the PCF become a parti comme les autres, the underlying basis of their affiliation to the organization retained a profoundly metaphysical element, which suggested that most of the critics simply could not bring themselves to regard their membership of the PCF from an empirical perspective. By 1980, as noted, a few intellectuals, such as Alexandre Adler, had reached the conclusion that their political disagreements with the party had become too important to justify their continuing membership. Most of the public participants of the intra-party dispute, however, did not follow this course of action, and thus chose to remain within the organization. The considerations which underlay this decision varied to some extent, as the preceding sections have demonstrated. Ultimately, it could be argued that these variations were manifestations of a pervasive sentiment of optimism which was commonly experienced by the critical intellectuals. Thus, an important factor in their rejection of any institutional alternative to the PCF (such as the Parti Socialiste) was their deepseated belief that their party could be reformed from within, despite its current failure to perform its vanguardist role in French society. As late as 1981, for example, a leading critic could still express the following optimistic hopes: ‘Je pane sur ce qui naît, sur la modernité, sur l'objectivité des choses, sur la laïcisation du Parti. Je parie sur la réussite des efforts engagés en ce sens.’111 This form of confidence was matched by another variant, which might be described as a delegation of optimism. For many intellectuals, the PCF, despite its flaws, continued to provide the central focus of identification for the French proletariat. As long as the party retained its proletarian support, therefore, these intellectuals felt compelled to remain within the counter-community, however many couleuvres they were made to swallow by the PCF authorities. The most impressive expression of faith, however, was (p.236) provided by those intellectuals whose affiliation to the PCF was primarily based upon an optimistic conception of history. Appropriately enough, the itinerary of two Communist historians have been singled out to illustrate this rather extreme form of intellectual optimism. But it should not be concluded thatonly professional historians were prone to such eccentricities. The poet and chansonnier Jean Ferrat's attitude towards the PCF also provides a good illustration of this principle. A committed activist who publicly expressed his support for the PCF before the 1978 elections,112 Ferrat was infuriated by the pro-Soviet orientation initiated by the party after its twenty-third Congress in May 1979, with its famous proclamation that the balance-sheet of the socialist countries was ‘globally positive’.113 As might have been expected, Ferrat expressed his anger Page 28 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? against the PCF in a song entitled Le Bilan, in which he scathingly denounced the party leadership as ‘Staliniens zélés’ who had demeaned themselves by reducing the crimes committed in the name of socialism to ‘des cadavres passés en pertes et profits’. Yet, by 1981, Ferrat was obligingly supporting the candidature of Georges Marchais for the presidency.114 He gave his reasons for remaining in the mouvance communiste in another song, brought out a few years later:115 Je n'ai pas voulu retourner ma veste Ni me résigner comme un homme aigri Je resterai fidèle à l'esprit Qu'on a vu paraître avec la Commune Et qui souffle encore au coeur de Paris. The intensity of this touching profession of revolutionary faith was matched only by its prodigious distance from the social and political reality of its time. Notes:

(1) An expression used by Raymond Jean, in La Singularité d'être communiste (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 82. (2) Quoted in Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre 1905–1980 (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), 569. (3) Maurice Goldring, L'Accident: Un intellectuel communiste dans le débat du printemps 1978 (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1978), 157 and 161. (4) In L'Humanité, 10 Nov. 1977. (5) See the petition signed by Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, Guy Bois, Georges Labica, Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, and Maurice Moissonier in Le Monde, 6 Apr. 1978. The party leadership was severely taken to task for organizing what amounted, in the signatories' view, to a ‘parodie de discussion’. (6) In Le Monde, 13, 14, and 15 Apr. 1978. (7) Subsequently published as Ce qui ne peut plus durer dans le Parti Communiste (Paris: Maspéro, 1978). (8) François Hincker, in La Nouvelle Critique, Apr. 1978; quoted in Le Parti Communiste au carrefour (Paris: Albin Michel, 1981), 201. (9) Quoted in Gérard Molina and Yves Vargas (eds.), Ouverture d'une discussion? (Paris: Maspéro, 1979), 120. (10) Ibid. 116. (11) Section II, Art. 7 of ‘Les Statuts du Parti Communiste Français’, in Cahiers du communisme, June–July 1979, pp. 409–10. Page 29 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? (11) SeeYvonne Quilès and Jean Tornikian, Sous le PC, les communistes (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 265. (12) Henri Fiszbin, Les Bouches s'ouvrent (Paris: Grasset, 1980), 206. (13) The 12th condition, for example, called for party members to be bound by an ‘iron discipline’, and for the leading organs to be endowed with ‘complete power, authority, and ample rights’. See Robert Daniels (ed.), A Documentary History of Communism, ii (New York: Vintage, 1985), 46. (14) See E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923, i (London: Penguin, 1977), 208. (15) See Irwin M. Wall, French Communism in the Era of Stalin (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1983), 145. (16) Art. 8: ‘L'organisation et l'activité de tendances ou de fractions ne sont pascompatibles avec le fonctionnement démocratique du parti. Elles saperaient son unité et l'efficacité de son action. Elles ne peuvent être admisis.’ See ‘Les statuts du PCF’, 410. (17) In L'Humanité, 27 Apr. 1978. (18) As Michel Barak noted with regard to the Aix-en-Provence petition (which he had coordinated), only 3 out of the 1,500 signatories had explicitly called for the creation of anindependent association within the PCF. See Fractures au PCF (Aix-en-Provence: Karthala, 1980), 126. (19) Gérard Molina and Yves Vargas, Dialogue à l'intérieur du Parti Communiste(Paris: Maspéro, 1978), 15–16. A similar argument was used by Jean Ellenstein, for whom the organization of factions in the PCF ‘bloque le débat plutôt qu'il ne lefavorise’. See his interview in Le Nouvel Observateur, 25 Sept.– 1 Oct. 1978. (20) A very crude classification, which does monstrous injustice to the infinitely subtle variations represented by individual cases, would distinguish between ‘Euro-communists’, who campaigned for greater ideological and organizational liberalization; orthodox Leninists, who wanted the latter but argued for a return to the principles of revolutionary purity; and the ‘Italians’, whose views attempted to synthesize these two poles. (21) Jean Rony, Trente ans de Parti: Un communiste s'interroge (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1978), 226–7. (22) Ibid. 211–12.

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A Party Like All Others? (23) See e.g. Laurent Casanova, ‘Responsabilités de I'intellectuel communiste’, Cahiers du communisme, Apr. 1949, p. 443. (24) In Vive la crise! (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 182–3. (25) In La Singularité d'être communiste, 84–5. (26) See Raymond Jean, ‘Trajet politique et romanesque’, Le Magazine littéraire, 166 (Nov. 1980). (27) The great irony, from this point of view, was that the intellectuels de parti were potentially in a much better position to undertake this task, given that their status as permanent party officials enabled them to be relatively independent of civil society. But many intellectuals in this position had simply substituted one form of dependence for another. In practice, the PCF could be just as tyrannical a patron as the ones regularly denounced in the party press. See Antoine Spire, Profession permanent (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 237–8. (28) Fiszbin, Les Bouches s'ouvrent, 129. (29) Ibid. 168–9; emphasis added. (30) Ibid. 179. (31) Fiszbin further developed this theme, and concluded that such a profound renovation of the communist mentalité was possible, in his Appel à l'autosubversion (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1984). (32) The first issue was dated 14 May 1981. (33) Georges Marchais received 15.35% of the votes cast in the first ballot of the 1981 presidential elections—a considerably lower % than had been optimistically predicted in L'Humanité as late as 23 Apr. 1981, and a clear drop from the 20.6% of the votes gained by the party in the 1978 legislative elections. (34) See Le Nouvel Observateur, 4–10 July 1981. (35) See the resolution of the Central Committee of 9 Oct. 1981, in Cahiers du communisme, Nov. 1981, p.110. In accordance with the newspeak of the PCF, these expulsions were characterized as a process in which the dissidents ‘choisissent eux-mêmes de se mettre hors du Parti’. (36) See Rencontres Communistes hebdo, 13 Jan. 1983. (37) Hincker, Le Parti Communiste au carrefour, 231. (38) In this respect, the parallel between communist parties and other social institutions such as the Church was striking. Both operated on the basis of the Page 31 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? individual's voluntary affiliation to a transcendental ideal, and based their view of the world on the interpretation of specific scriptures; both doctrines described man's fall from grace and his ultimate redemption; both institutions, furthermore, relied to a considerable extent on the existence of simple rituals to maintain internal cohesion, and provoked the same initial feelings of remorse and alienation in those who abandoned its fold. The great difference between the two organizations, perhaps, was pointed out by PCF leader Maurice Thorez in a conversation with his friend the Italian communist Senator Giulio Ceretti: the Church, after 2,000 years, had finally learnt to tolerate diversity in its midst, whereas the communist movement, still in its infancy, had quite a long way to go before attaining this objective. See Giulio Ceretti, A L'ombre des deux T (Paris: Julliard, 1973), 345–6. (39) Pierre Naville, ‘L'Intellectuel communiste’ (1956), in La Révolution et les intellectuels (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 156. (40) See Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Paris-Montpellier: PC-PSU 1945–1963 (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), 99. (41) Ibid. 224. (42) Jean Bruhat, ‘L'Apport de Maurice Thorez à I'histoire’, Cahiers du communisme, Apr. 1950, p. 36. On the general atmosphere amongst communist historians during this period, see Jean Bruhat's memoirs, Il n'est jamais trop tard (Paris: Albin Michel, 1983), 156–63. (43) For example, psychoanalysis was flatteringly described in L'Humanité (27 Jan. 1949) as ‘une idéologic de basse police et d'espionnage’. See Jeannine Verdès-Leroux, Au service du parti (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 259. (44) Rochet's definition of an aurea mediocritas between the positions of Althusser and Garaudy was implicit in his criticism of their approaches. The latter was chastised for exaggerating the philosophical convergences between Marxism and Christianity, whilst the former was criticized for his suggestion that theoretical activity could be divorced from the practice of the class struggle. See Waldeck Rochet, ‘Le Marxisme et les chemins de l'avenir’, Cahiers du communisme, May–June 1966. (45) Ibid. (46) It was rather interesting to note, however, that the quest for ‘scientific’ truth remained the precise object of the Althusserian enterprise in the early 1960s: to ‘draw a line of demarcation between Marxist theory and the forms of philosophical (and political) subjectivism which have compromised it or threaten it …’ (Louis Althusser, For Marx (London: Verso, 1977), 12). Just at the moment when the PCF was turning its back on Stalinist philosophy, Althusser's Page 32 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? conception appeared to represent a clear reversal to the Stalinist problematic. Leszek Kolakowski was therefore quite justified in concluding that Althusser's theoretical work represented ‘a return to old-fashioned communist bigotry’ (in Main Currents of Marxism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), iii. 486). At the same time, as Ch. 8 will demonstrate, Althusser's political condemnation of the historical and contemporary ramifications of Stalinism in the 1970s was categorical. (47) Quoted in Pierre Daix, Aragon: Une vie à changer (Paris: Seuil, 1975), 414. (48) From the full text of the resolution in Cahiers du communisme, May–June 1966, p. 279. (49) On the grounds that these disciplines had a ‘rapport direct’ with politics, and, therefore, could not be allowed to contradict established party policy. See Rochet, ‘Le Marxisme et les chemins de l'avenir’. (50) See Georges Lavau, A quoi sert le Parti Communiste Français? (Paris: Fayard, 1981), 159–71. (51) As the Preamble to the party constitution affirmed with full pomp: ‘Dans son effort constant d'analyse de la réalité sociale, dans son activité théorique comme dans son action, le Parti Communiste Français s'appuie sur le socialisme scientifique … Cette théorie, matérialists et dialectique, s'enrichit sans cesse à partir de l'avancement du savoir et de la pratique sociale, des expériences de l'action de classe des travailleurs en France …’ See ‘Les Statuts du PCF’, 406. (52) Gérard Belloin, Nos rêves camarades: Infi(r)me(s) mémoires (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 108. (53) Maurice Thorez, Fils du peuple (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1949), 240; emphasis added. (54) Guy Besse, in L'Humanité, 21 July 1977; quoted in Lavau, A quoi sert le Parti Communiste Français?, 160. (55) Roger Martelli, ‘Étudier I'histoire du P.C.F.’, Cahiers du communisme, Oct. 1980, p. 83; emphasis added. (56) André Harris and Alain de Sédouy, Voyage à l'intérieur du Parti Communiste (Paris: Seuil, 1974), 204. (57) Ibid. 50; emphasis added. (58) In L'Humanité, 21 Mar. 1978. (59) Ibid. 8 Apr. 1978; emphasis added.

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A Party Like All Others? (60) Hincker, Le Parti Communiste au carrefour, 195. (61) In an interview with Le Monde, 31 Mar. 1978. (62) Who included in their ranks the philosophers Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, Georges Labica, Maurice Moissonnier, Guy Bois, and Jean-Pierre Lefebvre. (63) In Le Monde, 6 Apr. 1978. (64) Ibid. 27 Apr. 1978. (65) Ibid. (66) Letter of Berthe and Régis Martin, 10 Aug. 1978; quoted in Barak, Fractures au PCF, 150; emphasis added. (67) Rony, Trente ans de parti, 211. (68) Ibid. 221. (69) Brière, Vive la crise! 169. (70) Ibid. 133–4. (71) Spire, Profession permanent, 20; emphasis added. (72) Belloin, Nos rêves camarades, 110. (73) Ibid. 189. (74) Ibid. 111. (75) The pertinence of this question was naturally reduced by the defeat of the Left in Mar. 1978. (76) The term was coined by one of the prominent figures of this ‘school’, Bernard-Henri Lévy, in a special issue of Les Nouvelles littéraires (June 1976) devoted to the question of ‘new philosophy’. (77) Tony Judt, Marxism and the French Left (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 198. (78) See e.g. the article by Bernard Vasseur in L'Humanité, 12 Mar. 1979, which subtly asked the following rhetorical question: ‘Comment ne pas voir que derrière la bannière de la défense contre le totalitarisme, les forces du capital tentent d'organiser un dispositif d'acceptation de la crise?’

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A Party Like All Others? (79) For a broader analysis of the ‘function’ of the concept of totalitarianism in the struggle against communism, see Bernard Michaux, ‘Remarques sur l'idée de totalitarisme’, Cahiers du communisme, May 1978, pp. 80–92. (80) As the Central Committee journal France-Nouvelle remarked in its edition of 27 Aug. 1973: ‘Monter en épingle les défauts des pays socialistes, et il est inévitable qu'il en ait à ce stade de leur histoire, comme le fait Le Nouvel Observateur, c'est le meilleur moyen de décourager les travailleurs en lutte pour une société meilleure en France.’ Quoted in Jean Daniel, L'Ère des ruptures (Paris: Grasset, 1979), 181–2. (81) See n. 3. (82) Quoted from an interview given to Le Nouvel Observateur, 10 Apr. 1978. (83) Goldring, L'Accident, 164. (84) Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1978. (85) From ‘Entretien avec Alexandre Adler’, Critique communiste, Oct. 1980, p. 5. (86) Ibid. 51; emphasis added. (87) Ibid. 52–3. (88) Hélène Parmelin, Libérez les communistes! (Paris: Stock-Opéra Mundi, 1979), 14. (89) See e.g. Goldring, L'Accident, 53. (90) See D. S. Bell and B. Criddle, The French Socialist Party: The Emergence of a Party of Government, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 102–8. (91) Françoise Bouillot & Jean-Michel Devesa, Un parti peut en cacher un autre(Paris: Maspéro, 1979), 140. (92) Goldring, L' Accident, 131. (93) Bouillot and Devesa, Un parti peut en cacher un autre, 26; emphasis added. (94) Fiszbin, Les Boucbes s'ouvrent, 17; emphasis added. (95) André Stil, L'Optimisme librement consenti (Paris: Stock, 1979), 200. (96) Notably as a chronicler in the communist newspaper Ce Soir between 1947 and 1953, then at L'Humanité from 1954 until his death.

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A Party Like All Others? (97) For more details, see André Wurmser, Fidélement vôtre (Paris: Grasset, 1979), 408–30. (98) Ibid. 116. Wurmser later added, with all the appearance of seriousness, that the superiority of the communist journalist resided in the fact that his writings were informed by the ‘correct’ political perspective; see ibid. 391. (99) Ibid. 475. (100) Ibid. 430. (101) Bruhat, Il n'est jamais trop tard, 10. (102) The extended list of signatories was published in Le Monde, 20 May 1978. (103) In Le Monde, 25 Apr. 1980. In May 1981, furthermore, when Fiszbin and Hincker set up the dissident organization Rencontres Communistes, Bruhat gave it his unqualified support. (104) The first issue of which appeared in Feb. 1981. (105) Jean Bruhat, ‘Où est aujourd'hui l'homme nouveau?’, Le Monde diplomatique, Feb. 1982; emphasis in text. (106) In Il n'est jamais trop tard, 258. (107) The Institut Maurice Thorez, which became part of the new Institut de Recherches Marxistes in 1980. The political role played by historians during the intra-party dispute will be discussed further in Ch. 7. (108) In the same way, it may be added, as his predecessor Albert Soboul, also a member of the PCF who regularly expressed his public support for the party. See. e.g. his signature to the ‘Appel à voter communiste’ in the elections of March 1978, in L'Humanité, 16 Feb. 1978. (109) See Vovelle's individual appel in L'Humanité, 24 May 1984. (111) Hincker, Le Parti Communiste au carrefour, 262. He was expelled from the PCF in the same year. (112) His name appeared in the ‘Appel à voter communiste’ published in L'Humanité, 16 Feb. 1978. (113) ‘Le bilan des pays socialistes est globalement positif’; quoted from the resolution adopted by the Congress, published in Cahiers du communisme, June– July 1979, p. 372. (114) See his declaration of support in Révolution, 24 Apr. 1981. Page 36 of 37

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A Party Like All Others? (115) Jean Ferrat, Les Cerisiers (Paris: Productions Alleluia, 1985).

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The Undermining of Allegiances

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

The Undermining of Allegiances Sudhir Hazareesingh

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses the frustration of critical intellectuals with the increasingly aggressive refusal of the French Communist Party (PCF) to accede to any of their demands for substantive reforms. The toughening of the party leadership's attitude towards the contestaires culminated in a wave of expulsion after 1980 and the imposition of greater ideological uniformity in the countercommunity as a way to reinforce their hold over the organization. The chapter concludes that the efforts to restore rigid control on intellectual activities seriously undermined traditional forms of allegiance to the PCF, thereby creating the initial conditions for intellectual disaffiliation from the party. Keywords:   intellectuals, French Communist Party, reforms, expulsion, political parties, political disaffiliation

THE marked deterioration of the internal atmosphere within the PCF provides the setting for this chapter. Its basic theme will be the frustration of the critical intellectuals in face of the PCF's increasingly aggressive refusal to accede to any of their demands for substantive reforms. This toughening of the party leadership's attitude towards the contestataires culminated in a wave of expulsions after 1980. Furthermore, the PCF authorities sought to reinforce their hold over the organization by imposing greater ideological uniformity in the counter-community. This denial of greater intellectual autonomy will be illustrated by the PCF's dealings with its research institutes and press organizations. It will be concluded that these efforts to restore rigid controls on intel-lectual activities in the party seriously undermined traditional forms of

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The Undermining of Allegiances allegiance to the PCF, and, therefore, created the initial conditions for intellectual disaffiliation from the party.

A New Departure? In early December 1979 the PCF proudly announced the opening of its new research institute, the Institute de Recherches Marxistes. The party leadership issued invitations to a wide cross-section of intellectuals from the countercommunity, and the presence of approximately 1,500 guests at the inaugural reception seemed to suggest that relations between the PCF and its haute intelligentsia were gradually reverting to a semblance of normality. The PCF leadership appeared to be keen, in the aftermath of the twenty-third Congress and the European elections of summer 1979, to offer party intellectuals tangible signs of affection. A new centre for intellectual activity, a weekly journal bearing the appetising title of Révolution, the organization of a special session of the (p. 238) Central Committee exclusively devoted to intellectual and cultural affairs, and the opening of a ‘tribune de discussion’ in the party press to enable intellectuals to communicate their views to the PCF authorities: did these developments not imply that the Sturm und Drang of the intra-party dispute was giving way to a new phase of harmony between intellectuals and the party leadership? Yet, beneath the apparent tranquillity of the atmosphere, the passions generated by the crisis remained as intense as they had been in March 1978. In contrast to the initial buoyancy of the atmosphere, the mood of the critics was rapidly turning to disillusionment, provoked by a growing awareness that the postelectoral crisis was turning to the advantage of the PCF leadership. The resolution of the conflict would be achieved by the use of political and administrative methods which would widen the rift between the critics and the party authorities, and eventually result in a process of widespread disaffiliation of intellectuals from the PCF. The defeat of the rebels

A closer inspection of the state of affairs in the counter-community towards the end of 1979 revealed that relations between the PCF authorities and the critical intellectuals were rapidly approaching a point de non-retour. The bold initiatives mentioned above could not conceal the uncomfortable truth that most leading dissidents, including Louis Althusser, Raymond Jean, Georges Labica, and Étienne Balibar, had become so alienated from the party that they were not welcome at the inaugural reception for the new Institut;1 the new weekly Révolution would be created only after a sweeping purge of journalists who had collaborated with the two journals France-Nouvelle and La Nouvelle Critique; and the ‘debate’ in the party press before the February 1980 meeting of the Central Committee would be tightly controlled by the party leadership, which would not hesitate to refuse the contributions of a number of critics, including Jean Ellenstein, Hélène Parmelin, Antoine Spire, and Yvonne Quilès.2 More Page 2 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances generally, the atmosphere in the counter-community was already beginning to (p.239) deteriorate after the development of the ‘Paris affair’. The resignation of the Paris Federation leadership would be accompanied by further purges of rebellious intellectuals. As if these did not constitute sufficient grounds for aggravating existing divisions within the counter-community, the PCF was also preparing to generate further controversy in its ranks by supporting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, thus reopening the bitter conflict over the nature of the party's relations with the Soviet Union. The normalization of dissent

The Rencontres Communistes episode, which was outlined in the preceding chapter, illustrated the severe deterioration in the internal climate of the counter-community since the outbreak of the intra-party dispute in 1978. The fissures which emerged in the PCF during the first eighteen months of the crisis were rapidly developing into extensive cracks, which were beginning to threaten the stability of the entire edifice. A dispute which was confined initially (in its public expression) to the grass roots of the PCF had developed into a conflict which pervaded all levels of the party organization. Henri Fiszbin, the president of the Rencontres Communistes association, was hardly the type of intellectuel petitbourgeois who could provide easy fodder for the expression of the party leadership's ouvriériste instincts. A working-class cadre who had worked for the PCF appareil since 1956, Fiszbin was the archetype of the Communist permanent whose abiding sense of devotion to the party had traditionally served to buttress the internal cohesion of the counter-community. The very fact that such an individual had directly challenged the institutional mores of the PCF was a telling reflection of the extent to which the unity of the party was threatened at all levels. As the journalist Yvonne Quilès remarked in a declaration in Le Matin: ‘Ce qu'il y a de nouveau aujourd'hui dans le PC, c'est que la crise, rampante ou non, atteint toutes les catégories sociales, et, fait sans précédent, l'appareil permanent.’3 (p.240) The atmosphere in the party soon began to reflect this evolution. During the initial phases of the intra-party dispute, a general sense of optimism still pervaded the counter-community. Intellectuals strongly believed that their party could be transformed from within, and the party leadership still entertained high hopes for the long-term political prospects of the PCF. Although, as indicated, the internal barometer of the counter-community had oscillated between periods of high tension and relative tranquillity throughout 1978 and 1979, the party leadership and its intellectual critics still recognized each other as members of the same social and political community. The rebellious intellectual could have described his relationship with his party in the terms used by Sartre after the death of Albert Camus: ‘Nous étions brouillés … une brouille, ce n'est rien, tout juste une autre manière de vivre ensemble et sans se perdre de vue dans le petit monde étroit qui nous est donné.’4

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The Undermining of Allegiances In the years which followed, however, this querelle de famille gradually turned into a dramatic and irreconcilable feud, primarily as a result of the more repressive attitude adopted by the PCF leadership towards the contestataires. Thus, the underlying optimism of the 1978–9 period began to give way to a greater sense of foreboding. Most intellectuals' pronouncements became markedly more cautious after 1980. In conclusion to his book, Henri Fiszbin, despite holding some hope for the future, made it clear that the process of democratization of the PCF was far from ‘irréversible’.5 This greater strand of pessimism set the scene for the process of disaffiliation which would follow over the next decade. Accordingly, the traditional cohesion of the counter-community would give way to the atmosphere of confusion and uncertainty which always attended the disintegration of a Gemeinschaft. As André Wurmser noted in a rather disabused manner: ‘tant d'intellectuels ne sont que de passage dans notre Parti qu'il en est de celui-ci comme des maisons de fous: tous ceux qui le sont n'y sont pas—tous ceux qui y sont ne le sont pas’.6

(p.241) The Denial Of Intellectual Autonomy The prompt expulsion of the founding members of the Rencontres Communistes association by the PCF authorities in 1981 was, above all, the logical culmination of the party leadership's increasingly determined efforts to expurgate all forms of intellectual non-conformism from the counter-community. From the middle of 1979 the party leadership signalled the adoption of a much less tolerant approach to the problem of internal dissent. The different manifestations of this hardening of attitude directly contradicted earlier promises to respect and even encourage intellectual autonomy, and thus stimulate the development of internal pluralism. This contrast between the rhetoric of the PCF and its practices provided the first major impulsion to the wave of intellectual disaffiliation from the party after 1979. The mechanics of this process will be the subject of the sections which follow. One of the fundamental aspirations of the rebellious intellectuals after March 1978, as previously noted, was to gain recognition of the principle of autonomous intellectual activity in the party. This objective was almost invariably expressed in negative rather than positive terms. Party intellectuals sought assurances that the PCF leadership would not interfere in their immediate spheres of activity. Once these guarantees of non-interference were provided, however, the authorities failed to live up to the expectations of the intellectuals. This disjunction between rhetoric and reality will first be illustrated by contrasting the leadership's undertaking to tolerate dissident activity with the repressive methods effectively used by the party hierarchy against the intellectual contestataires.

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The Undermining of Allegiances The administrative approach to dissent

In the early days of the intra-party rebellion, as many intellectuals publicized their concerns over strategic and tactical aspects of the PCF's policy, the party leadership rapidly quashed rumours to the effect that the rebels would be treated as unceremoniously as previous generations of internal critics. In an interview published in L'Humanité in early April 1978, Georges Marchais (p. 242) categorically affirmed: ‘La période des exclusions est définitivement révolue chez nous.’7 Despite the tensions engendered by the aggravation of the dispute over the following months, the party leadership gave every appearance of holding to its pledge. Although the PCF authorities often used harsh words against the rebels, they also took pains to maintain contacts at both formal and informal levels with the contestataires. The December 1978 Vitry meeting between the leadership and 400 party intellectuals was probably the most significant instance of the former.8 At the same time, party leaders received a number of leading figures in the rebellion on an individual basis, often spending long hours exchanging views over contentious issues.9 At the twenty-third Congress of the PCF in May 1979, the new constitution abandoned the old battery of sanctions against deviant party members. The streamlined disciplinary procedures still retained the principle of expulsion, subject to the imprimatur of the Central Committee.10 None the less, it was emphasized that these measures would be used à la lettre only in extreme circumstances, and that the leadership would do its utmost to adhere to the spirit of its declared policy of ‘no expulsions’. However, this principle of toleration was never allowed to stand in the way of the party leadership's vigorous political response to the internal dissidents. As the crisis developed, the PCF authorities used every available organizational means at their disposal (short of direct expulsion) to counter the arguments of the contestataires. This policy inexorably escalated to a point at which the sustained forms of pressure upon the dissidents were construed as thinly disguised attempts to force intellectuals to leave the PCF. This engrenage fatal may be illustrated by two complementary approaches adopted by the party leadership to counter the offensive of its critics: institutional marginalization and political confrontation. (p.243) Institutional pressure

As already suggested, the powerful resources of the party machine placed the leadership in a commanding position to control the course of events after March 1978. In contrast to an internal opposition which was fragmented along institutional, geographical, and ideological lines, the PCF authorities could rely on a centralized administrative system which was sophisticated enough to monitor the political views of individual party members. During the initial phases of the intra-party dispute this power was used in a relatively benign fashion. Under the austere and vigilant stewardship of Gaston Plissonnier, the party Secretariat organized a campaign to ‘explain’ the official position of the PCF to Page 5 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances the signatories of public petitions after March 1978. In the Paris Federation, for example, Henri Fiszbin personally supervised a campaign of individual visits to party members who had either signed the Aix-en-Provence petition or had addressed letters to the party authorities criticizing the policies of the PCF.11 Although the avowed objective of this strategy was to impress upon the dissidents the fallacy of their views, this initial campaign was not specifically geared towards intimidation or harassment (even though some of the meetings, quite understandably, developed into rather heated exchanges between the two sides). By early 1979, however, it was already becoming plain that the PCF leadership had decided to flex its organizational muscles in a more resolute manner. The preparation of the twenty-third Congress gave the authorities an ideal opportunity to use the power of the party machine to isolate the intellectual contestataires. Thus, local party cells and sections which were infested with dissidents were either dissolved or summarily attached to more conformist organisms. A typical example of this piece of institutional engineering was provided by the fate of the cell which had initiated the Aix-en-Provence petition in May 1978. As was made clear in the account subsequently published by its secretary, Michel Barak,12 the Jacques Duclos cell had already caused a stir within the counter-community before the outbreak of the intra-party dispute by passing a resolution, in June 1977, which condemned (p.244) the PCF leadership for ‘sous-estimation de la question de l'alliance, discours et pratiques ouvriéristes et anti-intellectuels, violation des règles du centralisme démocratique et manque de responsabilité politique dans la fonction dirigeante’.13 After the publication of the Aix petition, the cell obviously became a prime target for any punitive action undertaken by the leadership, particularly as its members were predominantly intellectuals who were based at the University of Aix-enProvence. In April 1979 the axe fell. The entire cluster of party cells which constituted the ‘Aix-Centre’ section was dissolved into a neighbouring organism, the ‘Aix-Nord’ section, whose collective behaviour had been impeccably orthodox during the intra-party dispute.14 This new institutional affiliation severely curtailed the ability of the Duclos cell to engage in oppositional activity, and thus placed its members under the direct tutelage of the party leadership. Many dissidents' party membership, accordingly, became a function of the bon vouloir du prince. Clearly out of favour with the party hierarchy, Michel Barak was eventually refused his membership card for the year 1981, and effectively expelled from the PCF.15 Political confrontation

Another way of approaching the process through which the PCF leadership pacified the intellectual rebellion would be to examine the way in which the arguments of the dissidents were received by party authorities. Here, again, a Page 6 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances similar form of escalation may be observed as the intra-party dispute gathered momentum. During the opening phases of the conflict the demands for greater internal democracy and intellectual autonomy were at least formally accommodated by the party leadership, which showed distinct signs of striving to keep open its communication lines with the rebels. At the Central Committee session of June 1978 the final resolution welcomed the development of the internal debate in the counter-community, which contributed to ‘enrichir le Parti …perfectionner le centralisme démocratique … corriger les défauts et (p.245) insuffisances qui freinent encore la marche en avant du Parti’.16 Although, as noted, the party leadership rejected the intellectuals' initial demands for greater access to the party press, the PCF organized an unprecedented meeting with 400 intellectuals at Vitry in 1978, the proceedings of which were comprehensively (and, une fois n'est pas coutume, accurately) reported in L'Humanité.17 In a similar spirit, the modification of party rules at the twentythird Congress in 1979 potentially widened the scope for discussions in the party press, even though the power to initiate these further debates was still kept in the hands of the Central Committee.18 From a substantive point of view, however, the PCF responded to the accusations levelled by the dissidents by drawing upon the formidable battery of crude arguments emanating from the classic Stalinist repertoire. The essential objective of the leadership, which remained unchanged at all stages of the intraparty dispute, was to discredit the internal opposition in the eyes of the mass membership. To this end, the party leadership reacted to the agenda of the contestataires by suggesting that the issues they raised were part of a systematic campaign to impugn the unity and cohesion of the party. For example, the demand for greater internal democracy in the PCF was rejected by Gaston Plissonnier on the classic grounds that the quality of intra-party democracy was superior to that of any other political organization.19 It naturally followed, from the leadership's point of view, that any efforts to change this efficient system could be informed only by ulterior (and sinister) motives. After the publication of the Aix-en-Provence petition in May 1978, accordingly, the Politburo produced a communiqué accusing the signatories of favouring ‘la liquidation du PCF comme parti d'avant-garde’.20 In addition to this technique of procès d'intention, the party leadership also repeatedly availed itself of another traditional weapon from the Stalinist heavy artillery: la politique de l'amalgame. A classic example of this process of deliberate misrepresentation (p.246) was provided by another Politburo resolution, adopted on 10 May 1978. This text severely condemned the dissidents for voicing their concerns about party policy in the non-communist media. The declaration then went on, however, to accuse the rebels of consorting with right-wing organizations, diverting the PCF from the terrain of the class struggle, and, in fine, encouraging ‘la vaste entreprise visant à affaiblir le Parti communiste pour créer les conditions d'une participation du Parti Page 7 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances Socialiste à la mise en œuvre de la politique du capital’.21 Thus, the authors of this resolution managed the remarkable tour de force of compromising, at one fell swoop, the internal dissidents of the PCF with all the political adversaries of French Communism: the ‘bourgeois’ press, the Right, the French patronat, the Socialist Party, and, last but not least, the capitalist class in its entirety. This conspiratorial view of the activities of the intellectuals was, finally, complemented by traditional derogatory references to their social origins. As already noted in Chapter 5, the ouvriériste undertones of the PCF leadership's pronouncements did not go unnoticed after March 1978, although the intellectuals appeared hesitant to face up to the full implications of this problem in the counter-community. None the less, the PCF's frequent references to the (obvious, but substantively irrelevant) fact that a large proportion of the contestataires were intellectuals provided a further illustration of the leadership's refusal to treat the arguments of its internal opponents from an intrinsic perspective. As Christine Buci-Glucksmann concluded at the Vitry meeting in December 1978, the PCF had never really abandoned the Stalinist conception of the intellectual as an alien who required constant surveillance: this was the ultimate cause of the party authorities' treatment of the rebels as ‘[des] boucs émissaires et petits-bourgeois ignorants’.22 Taken together, these official responses to the questions raised by the intra-party disputants demonstrated the existence of an implacable logic, which became apparent to most intellectuals by the middle of 1979: the elimination of political divergences in the (p.247) party, and the imposition of a greater degree of ideological uniformity upon the counter-community. The PCF's treatment of individual dissenters, as well as its reaction to the propositions advanced by the contestataires, undoubtedly confirmed the impression that the leadership was moving rapidly towards the exclusion of all dissonant voices from its midst. Nowhere was this process more immediately apparent than in the contrast between two meetings held in the space of fourteen months: the Vitry and Bobigny conferences of December 1978 and February 1980 respectively. At the former gathering, a raucous and singularly determined group of dissident intellectuals had challenged members of the Politburo on a whole range of issues, ranging from the subordinate role of women in the party to Georges Marchais's appearances on French television.23 The Bobigny National Conference of February 1980 took place in an entirely different climate. The most important single issue occupying intellectuals at the time was the PCF's position on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—a problem which will be considered in greater depth in Chapter 8. But the striking feature of the Bobigny meeting, when contrasted with the Vitry conference, was the almost total absence of debate between intellectuals and party authorities. The explanation was relatively simple: the party machine had prepared the ground. The 500 intellectuals invited had been carefully selected to avoid a repetition of Page 8 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances the boisterous proceedings at Vitry. A few of the guests, such as film producer Jean-Pierre Marchand, voiced some reservations about certain aspects of the PCF's policy.24 (He was to be expelled from the PCF in 1981.) On the whole, however, the intellectuals who attended the meeting were sages comme des images. The process of political and ideological normalization in the counter-community was already well under way. Ideological constraints upon research

The problem of individual autonomy in the PCF after 1978 may be illustrated further by the intellectuals' experience of political (p.248) and administrative interference in their own spheres of activity. As argued in the preceding chapter, there was a distinct evolution in the PCF's approach to the principle of intellectual autonomy after 1960. This could be summarized as the adoption of a considerably less dirigiste approach towards a wider range of general intellectual activities, and a greater element of flexibility in the principles which defined the conduct of research in areas (such as the social sciences) which remained under the direct control of the PCF authorities. It should be emphasized that the following section will not examine the specific direction in which this interplay between normative guidance and relative autonomy developed in the party's policy-oriented intellectual activities. For example, no attempt will be made to review the activities of numerous Central Committee sections de travail which dealt with the formulation of party policy in such specific areas as education, industrial relations, and foreign affairs. This neglect is not, of course, meant to imply that the study of such forms of intellectual activity would be intrinsically uninteresting.25 The problem would primarily be one of sources: none of the research conducted by these commissions is available to the public.26 More fundamentally, such goal-directed intellectual endeavours did not offer a fruitful ground for examining the central problem which concerns this argument: the direct intervention of PCF authorities in the autonomous activities of party intellectuals. From this perspective, the contrasting developments in the party's two principal research institutes offered a more promising terrain. Before the formation of the Institut de Recherches Marxistes in early December 1979, the PCF sponsored two administratively27 (p.249) separate research centres, the Institut Maurice Thorez (IMT), which focused on historical questions, and the Centre d'Études et de Recherches Marxistes (CERM), whose activities centred on the social sciences.28 After the development of the intraparty dispute in 1978, the CERM rapidly developed into one of the strongholds of intellectual contestation. Its members were not collectively engaged in factional activism: regular collaborators of the Centre included intellectuals who were at opposite ends of the party's internal ideological spectrum, such as Jean Ellenstein (Assistant Director of the Institute since 1970) and Georges Labica. Page 9 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances The relatively high incidence of dissident activity at the CERM after March 1978 was primarily a function of the fact that the Centre attracted the collaboration of a broad range of party intellectuals based in the Paris region. Thus, its ‘representative’ nature guaranteed that any tremors experienced in the intellectual counter-community as a whole would be reproduced in this microcosm. From this point of view, the intra-party dispute also provided an impulsion for the expression of problems which were specific to the intellectuals' activities at the CERM. Three principal lines of attack could be identified. The first grievance widely articulated by the critics concerned the basic principles which underlay the organization of intellectual activity at the CERM. As philosopher Georges Labica declared at the Vitry meeting in December 1978, the PCF admitted the conduct of research only when its objectives coincided with the basic strategic orientations of party policy.29 This subordination of autonomous intellectual activity to the dominant interests of the party was only the beginning of the problem, however. Even discussions which centred around themes which were directly relevant to PCF strategy seemed to have no visible effect upon the latter. These debates, therefore, were doubly inconsequential: initially vitiated by the direct intervention of party authorities to designate legitimate areas of research, their conclusions were eventually destined to be rejected (or, worse still, completely ignored) by PCF policy-makers. The ultimate explanation of this absurd process, according to Labica, was obvious: the party (p.250) leadership felt that it had nothing to learn from ‘its’ intellectuals, yet needed to keep them under the illusion that they were performing a valuable function in the collective life of the party. Reflecting upon the intra-party dispute in 1980, Labica added that the very discourse of the PCF contributed to the preservation of this duplicitous relationship. The party's langue de bois was ‘un certain type de discours préfabriqué, répétitif, clos, terminant le débat dès son ouverture, apportant à autrui une vérité toute constitutée, véhiculée par un vocabulaire stéréotypé …’.30 In sum, this line of attack echoed the wider intellectual criticism of the ‘scientific’ pretensions of the party leadership. The insignificant role of the CERM provided another illustration of the PCF's failure to accommodate the slightest challenge to its intellectual authority. Following directly from this attack upon the operational principles of the institution, a second strain of criticism was targeted at the compartmentalized nature of intellectual activity at the CERM. In one sense, this was part of a wider complaint that intellectual research in the PCF was institutionally fragmented. As already noted, historians, political analysts, and economists conducted their activities in different centres. These forms of research were undertaken under the supervision of different directors, who, in turn, did not necessarily share the same analysis of the current strategic requirements of the PCF. Even from the point of view of the party's centralized and instrumental conception of intellectual activity, this arrangement was clearly unsatisfactory. The principle of a fusion of the CERM with the Institut Maurice Thorez, which was agreed at the Page 10 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances Central Committee session31 of June 1979, was essentially (but by no means uniquely) a response to this problem of fragmentation. The intellectuals associated with the CERM, however, did not necessarily share this logique centralisatrice. In any event, their primary source of concern rested with the process of internal compartmentalization of intellectual activity at the Centre. (p.251) According to Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, this was essentially reflected in the limited recognition given to the intellectual's political views by party authorities. As long as he confined himself to his own area of specialized research, he was treated with deference and respect. However, as soon as the same intellectual began to address the wider political ramifications of his theoretical activities, he became a pariah: ‘on se méfie de ce que l'intellectuel raconte dans le domaine politique’.32 Thus, the picture of the CERM associate which emerged from the description of the critics was rather bleak: prevented from engaging in the research of his choice, finding his conclusions ignored by party authorities, and, suprema crudelitate, forbidden to venture into the field of politics, his situation clearly presented ample scope for improvement. It should not come as a great surprise, therefore, to find Georges Labica concluding that the CERM was nothing but a ‘ghetto pour intellectuels’.33 Finally, it should not be assumed that all forms of official intervention at the CERM were conducted through subtle methods. When needed, the PCF authorities could resort to ruthless and expeditious methods which would not have been disowned by their camarades soviétiques. The first blatant example of this approach during the intra-party dispute occurred in late 1978. Jean Rony, a regular participant in the activities of the CERM, had been put in charge of a commission de travail on the social-democratic movement in Europe. With the development of the internal rebellion after March 1978, Rony played an increasingly prominent role in voicing the concerns of the rank and file, and confirmed this remise en cause by publishing a monograph recording his trials and tribulations as a member of the PCF since the Cold War.34 In November 1978 Rony published an article in Le Monde in which he severely criticized the current strategic vision of the party. The response of the PCF was immediate and brutal. Politburo member Maxime Gremetz wrote a harshly worded response in the party press,35 and the offender was informed by (p.252) CERM director Guy Besse that his commission de travail had been suppressed. The entire episode was denounced by at least two participants36 at the Vitry meeting in December 1978 as a brazen act of censorship. Whilst this representation was undoubtedly accurate (the PCF signifying by its reaction that absolute political orthodoxy was a necessary prerequisite for conducting academic research), Rony's fate also illustrated an aspect of the party's conception of intellectual activity previously highlighted by Labica: that research should mirror and amplify the immediate contours of PCF policy.

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The Undermining of Allegiances Since the break up of the Union de la Gauche agreement in September 1977, the PCF authorities (for reasons which need not be discussed at this stage) had been systematically denouncing their former Socialist allies with a degree of vituperation which was reminiscent of the classe contre classe period before 1934. Given this political imperative, any academic enquiry which touched upon this question, if undertaken in the PCF's research institutes, had to corroborate the conclusions implicit in the strategy adopted by the party. In other words, the conclusions of a commission de travail on the role of social democracy in Europe had to express the current party orthodoxy on the subject. Since Jean Rony was a contestataire whose views on the Socialists did not conform perfectly to the official demonology, this result could not be guaranteed. He was, therefore, doubly punished: first, for his general political deviancy, and secondly, for having the temerity to believe that academic research should be impervious to the immediate political requirements of the PCF. A haven of tranquillity: The IMT

The aggregate effect of these practices on the associates of the CERM after 1978 was, quite predictably, a rapid process of disaffiliation from the Centre.37 In contrast to this flurry, the Institut Maurice Thorez (IMT) witnessed the development and eventual (p.253) conclusion of the intra-party dispute with few external signs of turbulent political activity in its midst. Thus, while their colleagues on the first floor of the building at Boulevard Blanqui were discussing ways of storming the party fortress, the historians of the IMT appeared almost impervious to the turmoil which (in this case, quite literally) surrounded them. It is worth reflecting, for a moment, on some of the reasons which could account for this paradoxical situation. First, one of the underlying causes of the high level of dissatisfaction at the CERM could not be reproduced at the IMT, given the nature of the latter's intellectual pursuits. It may safely be affirmed that historical research does not produce results which can immediately be fed into the policy-making process of a political organization. The collaborators of the IMT did not, therefore, operate under the same kind of direct constraints as those which limited their CERM colleagues' margin of manœuvre. This did not mean that these party historians were free agents, of course, or that the work they produced was entirely devoid of internal political significance. As will be argued below, the very opposite was the case. None the less, the normative parameters within which the IMT associates had to operate were ostensibly different, and this difference directly conditioned their perceptions of the intrinsic value of their work and its overall utility to the PCF. From this angle, the widespread sense of anomie which pervaded the CERM, based on the realization that the research conducted in its midst had no positive impact on party policy, could not have developed at the IMT, given the different expectations which underlay the historians' approach.

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The Undermining of Allegiances It is also arguable that the IMT historians had a greater sense of collective purpose, and that this partly acted as a brake upon the development of centrifugal political tendencies. The circle of party historians was relatively compact in comparison with the wider array of regular and occasional collaborators of the CERM, and this difference in size necessarily reduced the potential for professional and political disagreements. More importantly, perhaps, the IMT enjoyed a form of intellectual homogeneity which was unavailable to the CERM, given its multidisciplinary pursuits. There were two senses in which this inner cohesion could be perceived. Firstly, the collaborators of the IMT devoted themselves to the same scholarly pursuits when they were outside the (p.254) perimeters of the Boulevard Blanqui. Although by no means all IMT associates were academics by profession (Roger Martelli, for example, was professeur at a lycée in the suburbs of Paris), there was no essential difference between the type of research they undertook inside and outside the party fold. The work carried out at the IMT was, in this sense, the logical extension of their professional concerns. In contrast, the policy-oriented parameters of the CERM introduced an element of discontinuity between the traditional intellectual pursuits of its collaborators and the focus of their activities in the Centre. These cross-pressures were, as has been noted, further aggravated by direct political interference of the PCF authorities in the work of the CERM. Furthermore, and perhaps more significantly, there was a sense of cohesion at the IMT which was derived from a perception of common lineage with an established (and, in some respects, authoritative) intellectual school of history. The Communist historians of the IMT subscribed to a Marxist approach which was solidly grounded in French intellectual life, and was endowed with most of the conventional attributes of a distinctive discipline: an agreed methodology, a clearly demarcated set of questions, derived from common agreement on basic concepts, and, of course, a faithful band of practitioners. The quality of the work produced by this ‘school’ was, of course, rather uneven. As noted in the preceding chapter, the writings of Communist historians on the subject of the PCF's own history in the 1950s and 1960s were informed by a wide variety of considerations, none of which, however, extended to include the principles of accuracy and impartiality. The audience of the works published by these party historians was, accordingly, essentially limited to the confines of the countercommunity. In other areas, such as the history of the French Revolution, this Marxist/Jacobin school had undoubtedly been the hegemonic force, dominating the historiography and occupying many leading positions in French academic institutions. In any event, independently of the polemical arguments over its contributions to an understanding of the French revolutionary tradition,38 the existence (p.255) of this school provided an established intellectual groove, which served to reinforce the internal solidarity of the members of the IMT. At Page 13 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances the CERM, by contrast, the divisions were multiple: between different academic disciplines (e.g. political science and philosophy) and also within each area of specialization. In philosophy, for example, Guy Besse, Lucien Sève, and Georges Labica were not only interested in intrinsically different questions, but also used different methodologies to address them. At a deeper level, however, the lack of inner intellectual cohesion at the CERM was arguably a reflection of the fact that neither of its two principal disciplines could be attached to the sort of recognized and unitary tradition with which the IMT historian could immediately (and, in some cases, almost reverentially) identify. ‘Official’ PCF writings in the fields of politics, sociology, and philosophy, on the whole, never enjoyed anything even remotely comparable to the level of intellectual hegemony achieved by Communist historians in their specialized field. The case of Louis Althusser may be taken as l'exception qui confirme la règle. His dominant position in French philosophy in the 1960s and early 1970s was achieved in the teeth of strong internal opposition in Communist philosophical circles, and his work never really enjoyed the quasi-official status bestowed upon the writings of Roger Garaudy during the Thorezian era.39 Finally, the question of direct political interference by the PCF leadership in the activities of the IMT cannot be ignored. Since the level and intensity of this type of intervention was one of the major causes of the eruption of political dissatisfaction at the CERM after March 1978, should it be deduced from the absence of similar public outbursts at the IMT during the same period that the PCF refrained from exercising any directive influence on the activities of party historians? The available evidence suggests that this question should be formulated in slightly different terms. Before 1970 the PCF's approach to the presentation of its own history was heavily influenced by political considerations. The publication of the (p.256) Manuel d'histoire du PCF40 represented, in its most caricatural form, this essentially ideological conception of history.41 The first point to note, in this context, was the central importance of endogenous pressures within the counter-community to move away from this narrow and instrumental conception of historical writing. At the Argenteuil Central Committee session on ideological and cultural problems in 1966, the resolution was already stressing the need for the PCF to develop a more creative attitude towards ‘l'étude de la société et de son histoire’.42 In the course of the next five years there were a number of publications by party historians which demonstrated the existence of a nouvel état d'esprit among the Communist scholarly fraternity. For example, the collective work Le PCF dans la Résistance,43 and Alain Guérin's monumental Histoire de la Résistance44 marked a formal departure from the triumphalist certitudes on the subject which prevailed during the Thorezian era, even though the presentation of the PCF's position remained essentially unaltered. With the appointment of Jean Burles as Page 14 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances director of the IMT in 1972, this aggiornamento was notably accelerated. Two institutional initiatives stimulated the development of historical research at the IMT in the 1970s. The first was the creation of the Cahiers d'histoire de l'IMT, which was exclusively devoted to historical research, and produced a number of valuable monographs on the history of the PCF in the 1920s and 1930s.45 The second was the establishment of several commissions de travail on the origins of the PCF, involving the collaboration of party and non-party historians alike. The work of these commissions, which was conducted throughout the late 1970s, led to the production of a number of significant publications after 1980, (p.257) including a well-researched monograph on the Tours Congress,46 and a collective opus47 on the history of the PCF between 1920 and 1972. In conclusion, it might be tentatively suggested that the relative absence of public political protest48 on the part of IMT intellectuals during the intra-party dispute could partly have been induced by the relatively solid professional foundations upon which the Institut rested since the early 1970s. It was highly instructive that, at the Vitry meeting of December 1978 at which the CERM was savagely attacked by a number of critics, several intellectuals49 spoke in support of the IMT. It should be noted, however, that the transformation of the direction in which historical research in general (and studies on the PCF in particular) was conducted at the IMT was, beyond any doubt, initiated by the party authorities themselves. To this extent, it may be argued that the liberalization of Communist history was politically directed by the PCF leadership, but there was no evidence to suggest that the parameters of this process were constantly determined by political fiat. At the same time, even a cursory survey of the overall production in history after 1970 under the auspices of the IMT (and, after 1979, the IRM) would indicate quite clearly that party historians did operate within certain identifiable political and intellectual boundaries.50 Two completely opposing forms of explanation might be put forward to reconcile the above propositions. On the one hand, it might be argued that party authorities explicitly prescribed the political parameters of historical research at the IMT. These norms were then uncritically accepted by all associates at the (p. 258) Institut. On the other hand, it might be suggested that prescription was not necessary, as IMT associates had already assimilated and internalized these political norms, the acceptance of which was a condition of their selection as collaborators of the Institut in the first instance. Neither of these explanations is fully satisfactory. The first conjured up the unlikely image of IMT Director Jean Burles acting as the official sergeant-major of the PCF hierarchy, sternly wielding his truncheon at the slightest sign of intellectual deviancy. The second could pass muster if a static process was under examination: in other words, if the norms governing the conduct of historical research remained the same throughout the period under consideration. In fact, the boundaries of what was considered politically acceptable were in a state of constant fluctuation. To take but one example, a comparison of the writings of Communist historians on the Page 15 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances role of the PCF in the Resistance before 1941 would show an uneven but incontrovertible progression towards greater detachment, accompanied by a willingness to discuss (if only to justify) some of the murkier episodes in the party's history during this period.51 It will be granted that it is much harder to prescribe an effective set of norms when its parameters are subject to a process of constant modification. Ultimately, however, all the evidence available is of a purely circumstantial character: an open verdict has to be returned on the IMT case.

Purges In The Party Press Despite the attention given to the absence of political turmoil among party historians based at the IMT (and, after 1979, the IRM),52 it should be stressed that this type of political quiescence (p.259) was exceptional in the official intellectual networks of the PCF after March 1978. In this sense, the eruption of dissident activity in the CERM was considerably more representative of the high level of political dissatisfaction in the party's Parisian réseaux intellectuels. This may be confirmed by a rapid examination of developments in the PCF's press networks after 1978, which witnessed a process not dissimilar to the one which unfolded at the CERM: the progressive emergence of dissident political activity, followed by a gradual reassertion of official authority, in turn culminating in the systematic elimination of all dissonant voices from the PCF's journalistic community. After the outbreak of the intra-party dispute in March 1978, signs of disaffection in the Communist press rapidly reached the public domain. In April the resignation of Jacques Frémontier, the editor of party journal Action, already implied the existence of serious rifts among Communist journalists. In his public letter of resignation Frémontier indicated that his disagreements with the PCF were not limited to questions of political strategy. He expressed the hope that the party leadership would take effective steps to accommodate pluralistic views in the counter-community, and that the Central Committee would become ‘une assemblée réellement contradictoire, et non pas une chambre d'enregistrement à la mode du Soviet Suprême’.53 In the course of the following two years the party press became one of the central battlegrounds of the intra-party dispute, as the PCF authorities struggled to prevent dissident journalists from implementing, in their professional activities, their cherished principles of intellectual pluralism and political diversity. From this angle, the crisis in the PCF press reflected some aspects of the general dispute between intellectuals and the party leadership after March 1978. But, as in the case of the CERM, the dispute also raised a number of issues which were specific to the journalistic community of the PCF: the principle of editorial control, the extent to which unorthodox political views were compatible with intellectual activity in the PCF, and, more generally, the social Page 16 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances and professional origins of permanent and occasional collaborators of the party's press networks. In the following section these problems will be examined by focusing on (p.260) the crisis which engulfed (and eventually destroyed) one of the PCF's well-established weekly journals: France-Nouvelle. The case of France-Nouvelle

Founded in 1945 as the official organ of the Central Committee, France-Nouvelle developed into a journal which broached a relatively wide variety of political and cultural subjects. During the Cold War the vigorously polemical tone of the journal fully reflected the sectarian principles embodied in party policy.54 By the 1970s, however, a number of internal changes had significantly altered its style and content. This was reflected, inter alia, in the adoption of a notably more relaxed and informal tone, as part of a (successful) strategy to extend its relatively restricted readership to the wider confines of the French intellectual community. After the PCF's twenty-second Congress in 1976, this policy was accentuated by the recruitment, as regular collaborators, of a number of ‘external’ intellectuals from the academic, artistic, literary, and public policy sectors.55 By 1978 France-Nouvelle had established a distinctive identity in the counter-community as an open, informative, and lively forum in which professional Communist journalists fruitfully interacted with party intellectuals from a wide variety of disciplines. The journal was immediately embroiled in the controversies which surrounded the development of the intra-party dispute. Between March 1978 and June 1979 the journalists of France-Nouvelle were constantly locked in battle with the party authorities over several key issues, pertaining to both political and professional concerns. The first problem which confronted the journal was whether to open its columns to the wide-ranging internal debate triggered by the defeat of the Union de la Gauche. As already noted, the party leadership firmly rejected suggestions to proceed in this direction at the plenary session of the Central Committee in April. According to two regular collaborators of the organ, however, ‘l'écrasante majorité des journalistes’ was in favour of allowing critical views to be aired in the pages of (p.261) France-Nouvelle.56 This tension between the journalists and the party authorities over the question of intra-party democracy and pluralism remained essentially unresolved at the level of principle, creating an initial chasm between the leadership and the dissidents which gradually widened as the intra-party dispute gained momentum. The second problem, which followed directly from the first, pertained to the level of dissident political activity at the journal. This was manifested in two ways: by the publication of articles by France-Nouvelle journalists which were critical of the party leadership's political strategy in 1977–8; and the participation of many of the journal's regular collaborators in oppositional political activities in the counter-community. For example, Maurice Goldring was the author of polemical pieces in the journal,57 a dissident political activist in his Page 17 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances party cell at the University of Vincennes (Saint-Denis), and, finally, the author of an essay in which he reflected upon wider problems affecting intellectuals in the party.58 Similar activities by such individuals as Gérard Belloin, Yvonne Quilès, Jean Rony, and Jacques Brière ultimately raised the question of the relationship between political and professional commitments in the PCF. As will be seen, party authorities gradually came to adopt the view that absolute political orthodoxy was a necessary prerequisite for exercising the métier of journalist in the PCF's press networks. In order to understand the different types of pressure exercised upon dissidents at France-Nouvelle, it would be useful to return to the distinction drawn in Chapter 3 between professional party functionaries and external intellectuals who regularly collaborated with the Communist networks. The full-time staff of the journal were essentially in a similar position to any party functionary on the PCF payroll. As noted in the case of Henri Fiszbin, party officials of this type were traditionally expected to act as bulwarks of the authorities in all circumstances. In the case of Communist journalists, the conventions were strictly prescribed: individuals were allowed to hold (p.262) views which contravened official party policy in private, on condition that these disagreements were never made public. As Goldring and Quilès remarked: ‘un journaliste communiste est considéré … comme un permanent: dans les réunions, il doit représentor et défendre l'opinion de la direction du Parti Communiste’.59 From this perspective, it is easy to understand the bewilderment of party authorities when faced with the dissidence of permanent officials such as Yvonne Quilès, who had been a full-time party journalist for twenty-five years, and had always been a dependable executant of the party line. Unlike the vast majority of dissidents in the counter-community, however, these permanent officials were extremely vulnerable to direct pressure from party authorities, upon whom they effectively depended for their livelihood. As the intra-party dispute developed, the PCF found itself unable to resist the temptation to exploit this material dependence to secure greater compliance with its political views.60 Il y a des habitudes qui ne se perdent pas… The financial independence of external collaborators of France-Nouvelle from the PCF necessitated the adoption of a different strategy. Since these associates of the journal did not have to rely on the party for subsistence, the principal forms of pressure to which they could be subjected were political and psychological rather than material. What was particularly interesting, from this point of view, was the way in which the party leadership's view of these individuals became almost exclusively determined by their socio-professional characteristics. Accordingly, the traditional spirit of camaraderie which characterized the atmosphere at the journal was replaced by a climate of tension and suspicion, in which all external collaborators became the object of a coordinated campaign of vilification.61 If the purpose of this tactic was to make these intellectuals aware that they had overstayed their welcome, the party authorities clearly achieved this objective. The wider implication of the PCF's Page 18 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances attitude was not lost, however, on party intellectuals: the authorities were no longer prepared to tolerate public expression of opposition to party policy in any of the PCF's intellectual networks. (p.263) The weakening political bonds of the intellectuals to the PCF

The problems caused to the PCF leadership by the activities of fractious journalists at France-Nouvelle, but also at La Nouvelle Critique and even L'Humanité, plainly required a solution which would re-establish traditional forms of political authority in the Communist press. From the end of 1978 there were numerous signs that the PCF authorities were deeply divided over the strategy required to secure the ‘normalization’ of the dissent. In January 1979 the Politburo adopted a resolution entitled ‘France-Nouvelle est indispensable aux militants’, which declared that the journal ‘permet une plus fine connaissance de la politique du parti [et] stimule et nourrit la réflexion’.62 In June, however, at the session of the Central Committee, Georges Marchais announced that France-Nouvelle and La Nouvelle Critique would be merged into a single journal, with a different title. Politburo member Guy Hermier was entrusted with the task of organizing the fusion of the two organs.63 Thus, France-Nouvelle had become expendable, only five months after being held up to the party faithful as the epitome of political journalism. When the new journal Révolution eventually came off the presses in early 1980, only four out of the twenty-three regular collaborators of France-Nouvelle formed part of the new editorial team. The rest had either resigned or had been unceremoniously sacked.64 It was by no means coincidental that the decision to reorganize the two party research institutes was also taken at the same session of the Central Committee in June 1979. The basic thrust of the party leadership's internal policies after the end of 1978 could be summarized in one word: recentralization. All indices appeared to suggest that the party authorities were striving to restore a high level of political and ideological uniformity in the counter-community, even at the cost of provoking the withdrawal of intellectuals from the party fold. The unabashed use of administrative methods to marginalize individual dissidents at grass-root level, the organization of a muscular political campaign to discredit and distort the views of the contestataires, the brutal (p.264) intervention of the leadership in the intellectual activities of party researchers at the CERM, the summary eviction of the Fiszbin regime at the Paris Federation of the PCF for (among other things) its palpable lack of missionary zeal against dissidents, and, finally, the insistence on absolute political orthodoxy as a prerequisite for exercising journalistic activity in the PCF press: even the most benign opponent of the leadership would have been hard pressed to ignore the underlying pattern which these discrete elements constituted.

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The Undermining of Allegiances By the end of 1979 these developments were forcing many dissident intellectuals to reconsider the political rationale of their membership of the PCF. Since the development of the intra-party dispute in March 1978, the party authorities had already demonstrated their contempt for two of the principal goals which were common to all the rebellious intellectuals, independently of their ideological inclinations: the reform of the party organizational structure, to generate a greater level of internal democracy; and an official recognition of the principle of autonomous intellectual activity in the party. The rift between the contestataires and the party leadership was about to be widened by the PCF's official endorsement of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in early 1980—a decision which, as the following chapter will show, decisively undermined the political basis of the intellectuals' identification with the PCF. Notes:

(1) See Le Nouvel Observateur, 10–16 Dec. 1979. (2) See L'Humanité, 7 Feb. 1980, for the official justification of the rejection of the contributions from Ellenstein and Parmelin. (3) In Le Matin, 8 July 1980. (4) Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Albert Camus’ (1960), reproduced in Le Nouvel Observateur, 7–13 Jan. 1980; emphasis in text. (5) Henri Fiszbin, Les Bouches s'ouvrent (Paris: Grasset, 1980), 207. (6) André Wurmser, Discours de réception fatalement imaginaire de mon successeur à l'Académie Française (Paris: Messidor, 1981), 181. (7) See L'Humanité, 4 Apr. 1978. (8) Although other such meetings (on a relatively smaller scale) also took place, e.g. the discussions held by Georges Marchais with dissident party intellectuals at the PLM Saint-Jacques Hotel in May 1979. See L'Humanité, 29 May 1979. (9) e.g. Georges Marchais had a discussion with Hélène Parmelin and Edouard Pignon in June 1978 which lasted no less than 7 hours. See Parmelin's interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, 10–16 July 1978. (10) See Articles 14, 15, and 16 of ‘Les Statuts du Parti Communiste Français’, Cahiers du communisme, June–July 1979, pp. 411–12. (11) See Fiszbin, Les Bouches s'ouvrent, 58–9. (12) Michel Barak, Fractures au PCF (Aix-en-Provence: Karthala, 1980). (13) Ibid. 38. Page 20 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances (14) See Le Nouvel Observateur, 23–29 Apr. 1979. (15) Ibid. 16–22 Mar. 1981. (16) See L'Humanité, 21 June 1978. (17) Ibid, 11 Dec. 1978; also the article by François Salvaing, in L'HumanitéDimanche, 13 Dec. 1978. (18) See Articles 6 and 7 of ‘Les Statuts du PCF’, 408–9. (19) See his article in France-Nouvelle, 31 May 1978. (20) ‘Résolution du Bureau Politique du PCF’, 19 May 1978, Cahiers du communisme, June–July 1978, pp. 122–3. (21) in L'Humanité, 11 May 1978. (22) Christine Buci-Glucksmann, in Gérard Molina and Yves Vargas (eds.), Ouverture d'une discussion? (Paris: Maspéro, 1979), 21. (23) Ibid. 21 and 100. (24) See the report on the Bobigny meeting in Le Nouvel Observateur, 11–17 Feb. 1980. (25) It would, for example, be extremely intriguing to examine the quality of the information that was being fed into the PCF's policy-making process in the late 1970s, to determine the extent to which specific party policies were determined by ‘technical’ as opposed to ‘political’ considerations. Unfortunately, this can only be the subject of idle speculation until the public is granted access to the archives of the Central Committee (the short-term prospects of which, alas, require no speculation at all). See the interesting observations of François Hincker on the role of these commissions de travail, in ‘Le Groupe dirigeant du PCF’, Communisme, 10 (1986), 76–8. (26) An article in Le Nouvel Observateur, 14–20 Jan. 1980, provided one possible answer to the interrogation expressed in the previous note: it alleged that these Central Committee working parties had ceased to function by 1979, as almost all the ‘external’ intellectuals who regularly participated in these gatherings had stopped attending the meetings. (27) Although both were based in the same building on the Boulevard Blanqui. (28) With the exception of research in economics, which was always conducted under the wing of the party Central Committee at the Place du Colonel Fabien. (29) In L'Humanité, 11 Dec. 1978. Page 21 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances (30) Georges Labica, ‘Préface’, in Barak, Fractures au PCF, 11. (31) The organization of this fusion was entrusted to Francette Lazard, a professeur agrégé in history and geography, who had recently been promoted to the Politburo at the party's twenty-third Congress. See ‘L'Organisation du travail de la direction du PCF’, 21 June 1979, Cahiers du communisme, Aug.–Sept. 1979, pp. 163–5. (32) Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, in Molina and Vargas (eds.), Ouverture d'une discussion?, 30. (33) Ibid. 84. (34) Jean Rony, Trente ans de parti: Un communiste s'interroge (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1978). (35) See L'Humanité, 30 Nov. 1978. (36) Christine Buci-Glucksmann and France Vernier; see Molina and Vargas (eds.), Ouverture d'une discussion?, 23 and 59. (37) Although this did not necessarily imply that these intellectuals left the PCF at the same time, of course. The withdrawal of intellectual participation from the activities of the CERM was a symptom of the growing malaise among the communist intellectual community in Paris. (38) In his Penser la Révolution française (Paris: Gallimard, 1978, pp. 133–207) François Furet attacked the reductive and teleological interpretation of 1789 offered by generations of communist historians influenced by the writings of Mathiez and Soboul, and ultimately implied that this ‘catéchisme révolutionnaire’ was as misleading and inaccurate as the writings of party historians on the PCF. (39) None of Althusser's major works of the 1960s and 1970s was published by the Éditions Sociales, for example. (40) Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1964. (41) This work took so many liberties with the facts that even a typical Stalinist stalwart such as Jean Bruhat refused to have his name associated with the venture. See Jean Bruhat, Il n'est jamais trop tard (Paris: Albin Michel, 1983), 195–6. (42) From the resolution of the Argenteuil session, in Cahiers du communisme, May–June 1966, p. 278. (43) Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1970.

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The Undermining of Allegiances (44) Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1972. (45) See, in particular, Cahiers 25–26, ‘Le PCF et 1'Internationale Communiste’ (2ème trimestre 1978); 28, ‘L'Internationale Syndicale Rouge’ (4ème trimestre 1978); and 29–30, ‘Le Tournant de 1939’ (Ier trimestre 1979). After the fusion of the CERM with the IMT in 1979, this publication changed its title to Cahiers d'histoire de l'lnstitut de Recherches Marxistes. (46) Jean Charles et al., Le Congrès de Tours (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1980). (47) Le PCF: Étapes et problèmes 1920–1972 (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1981), with contributions by Roger Bourderon, Jean Buries, Jacques Girault, Roger Martelli, Jean-Louis Robert, Jean-Paul Scot, Danièle Tartakowski, Germaine Willard, and Serge Wolikow. (48) The only exceptions were the few historians, such as Jacques Girault, Simone Roux, Jean-Marc Gayman, and Maurice Moissonnier, who signed the Aixen- Provence petition (in Le Monde, 20 May 1978). As indicated in the following note, Moissonnier none the less spoke positively of the work carried out at the IMT at the Vitry meeting in Dec. 1978. (49) Including the historian Maurice Moissonnier and the philosopher Étienne Balibar; see Molina and Vargas (eds.), Ouverture d'une discussion?, 38 and 109. (50) As will be shown subsequently in the examination of the PCF's approach to the question of Stalinism. (51) For the culmination of this process of French communist glasnost, see Roger Martelli, Communisme français: Histoire sincère du PCF 1920–1984 (Paris: Messidor/Éditions Sociales, 1984), 89–94. (52) These conclusions, it should be stressed, only apply to the role of historians at the IMT. It is not being implied, of course, that there were no communist historians who actively participated in the intra-party dispute. The cases of Michel Vovelle and Jean Bruhat, to cite but two examples previously mentioned, indicated that this was far from being the case. It is interesting to note (without wishing to draw any firm conclusions from this fact) that neither Vovelle nor Bruhat were closely associated with the work undertaken by party historians at the IMT in the late 1970s. (53) See full text of his letter in Le Monde, 21 Apr. 1978. (54) See Jeannine Verdès-Leroux, Au service du parti (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 190– 1. (55) Maurice Goldring and Yvonne Quilès, Sous le marteau, la plume (Paris: Megrelis, 1982), 40. Page 23 of 24

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The Undermining of Allegiances (56) Ibid. 272. (57) e.g. in France-Nouvelle, 24 Apr. 1978, he wrote: ‘Pendant la campagne électorale, notre politique à l'égard des intellectuels est devenue une chanson sans paroles dont la musique s'était tue.’ (58) Maurice Goldring, L'Acadent: Un intellectuel communiste dans le débat du printemps 1978 (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1978). (59) Goldring and Quilès, Sous le marteau, 279. (60) Ibid. 283. (61) Ibid. 67. (62) ‘Résolution du Bureau Politique’, L'Humanité, 20 Jan. 1979. (63) See ‘L'Organisation du travail de la direction du PCF’, 163–5. (64) Goldring and Quilès, Sous le marteau, 69.

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Communist Internationalism Revisited

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

Communist Internationalism Revisited Sudhir Hazareesingh

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the evolution of the French Communist Party's (PCF) links with the Soviet Union and international communist movement. It argues that the party's return to the traditional canons of pro-Soviet internationalism after 1980 was rejected by Communist intellectuals and this created the initial conditions for the process of intellectual disaffiliation from the PCF during the following years. The party's attitude towards the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan instantly reopened the intellectuals' questions about the nature of the PCF's relationship with the Soviet Union. This issue has a number of essential elements, mostly related to the political strategy and historical identity of French Communism. Keywords:   French Communist Party, Soviet Union, invasion of Afghanistan, intellectuals, party disaffiliation, French communism

THIS chapter will examine the evolution of the PCF's links with the Soviet Union and the international communist movement. It will be argued that the party's perceptible return to the traditional canons of pro-Soviet internationalism after 1980 was rejected by most Communist intellectuals, and this paved the way for the process of disaffiliation witnessed during the following years. This analysis will begin with an assessment of the concept of ‘Eurocommunism’. It will be claimed that party intellectuals were strongly committed to this idea, despite its lack of substance in policy terms. The PCF's conception of the nature and significance of Stalinism will also be outlined. It will be shown that party intellectuals were keen to develop a greater understanding of this question in Page 1 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited the 1970s, given its direct bearing upon the PCF's assessment of the nature of the Soviet experience. These questions of strategic orientation and historical interpretation appeared to be settled by the PCF's unqualified approval of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. This endorsement was viewed by most intellectuals as a marked return to the PCF's traditional pro-Soviet position. By the same token, this decision was interpreted as a sign that the Communist Party was no longer interested in promoting immediate political change in France. Taken in conjunction with the failure to accede to any demands for internal reform, this approach by the party authorities completed the intellectuals' alienation from the counter-community.

The Soviet Connection The PCF's unqualified approval of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, sonorously delivered to the French public by Georges (p.266) Marchais during a live television interview from Moscow,1 represented a clear departure from the evolution which had marked the party's assessment of Soviet military actions during the previous two decades. In November 1956 the PCF had openly applauded the quelling of the Hungarian rebellion by the Red Army.2 When the troops of the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968, however, the PCF swiftly expressed its ‘reprobation’ of this use of military force against a sovereign socialist state.3 Although the PCF rapidly normalized its relations with the Husák regime after 1969, the party never retracted its public opposition to the methods used by the Soviet leadership to resolve its political disagreements with the Czechs. In August 1978 L'Humanité celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Soviet invasion by reminding its readers that the PCF's position on the issue remained unchanged.4 By unambiguously supporting the unseating of the Amin government in Afghanistan, the PCF appeared to be turning the clock back to 1956, undoing its own patient efforts to distance itself from the Thorezian policy of unconditional alignment on Soviet positions. The PCF's attitude towards the Afghanistan issue instantly reopened one of the central questions raised by Communist intellectuals during the intra-party dispute: the nature of the PCF's rapports with the Soviet Union and the international communist movement. There were a number of essential elements to this problem, each of which had a central bearing upon the political strategy and historical identity of French Communism. Strategic visions

The first problem posed by the Afghanistan issue bore upon the strategic axis of the PCF's international policy. Before 1978, the party had signalled, in a number of ways, its intention of breaking away from its historical identification with the political objectives of the Soviet-led international communist movement. In the Thorezian era the party had consistently subordinated its political (p.267) Page 2 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited objectives to the prevailing interests of the USSR. This dependence necessarily limited the PCF's scope for developing a genuinely autonomous strategy, based upon the social and political interests of the labour movement in France. In the 1960s, despite its official condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the PCF repeatedly reaffirmed its complete agreement with the political goals of the international communist movement. At the Moscow conference of Communist and workers' parties in June 1969, for example, the PCF fully supported the Soviet analysis of the international system, while the Italian and Spanish Communists remained much more circumspect in their approach.5 In the years which followed, however, the PCF (undoubtedly under the impulsion of the Programme commun agreement of 1972) tentatively initiated a movement towards greater strategic independence. The party leadership rejected Soviet criticisms of the PCF's domestic alliance with the Socialists, and firmly indicated that its immediate political objectives could not be overriden by external interests.6 At the Berlin conference of European Communist parties in June 1976, the PCF went a step further in this direction by rejecting the doctrine of proletarian internationalism, which had traditionally expressed the leading role of the Soviet party in the formulation of the strategic objectives of the international workers' movement.7 None the less, the positive pole of this retreat from Soviet political objectives was never fully defined by the PCF after 1975. The notion of ‘Eurocommunism’, which gained wide currency after several meetings between leaders of the French, Italian (PCI), and Spanish (PCE) Communist Parties between 1975 and 1977, was never developed beyond the articulation of a few banal formulas, such as the necessity to reconcile socialist principles (p.268) with democratic practices.8 Despite its lack of substantive content, however, the idea of ‘Eurocommunism’ was extremely significant from a symbolic perspective. Many party intellectuals welcomed the development of close ties with the PCI and the PCE as a prelude to greater strategic autonomy from the Soviet Union, which would be further reinforced by the pursuit of the policy of Union de la Gauche in France. The PCF's domestic and external policies were dialectically intertwined: as François Hincker noted, the more the party moved away from the international communist movement, the greater was the internal dynamic to integrate the PCF into the French social and political system.9 But neither element of this dialectic offered a positive vision of the alternative direction in which the PCF should develop its international policies. The logical substitute for the traditional alignment on Soviet directives was implicit in the very concept of ‘Eurocommunism’. It called for the elaboration of a strategy centred upon the common social, political, and economic interests of the Communist Parties of Western Europe (more specifically, of the Mediterranean Basin). The search for this Holy Grail was clearly one of the underlying preoccupations of party intellectuals after 1975. Unfortunately for them, the PCF's strategic orientation gradually moved in a completely opposite direction. Page 3 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited The Afghanistan issue only brought final confirmation of this de-alignment from the principles implicit in the notion of ‘Eurocommunism’. Desperately seeking strategy

Ultimately, the development of this new international strategy by the PCF rested on two pillars. Firstly, the party had to reassess its positive conception of the role of the Soviet Union in the international system, a necessary prelude to redefining its own role in the arena of world politics. Secondly, the PCF needed to identify common political objectives with its fellow European Communists, (p. 269) and gradually build upon these convergences to define a collective strategy for West European Communism. The domestic policy of Union de la Gauche with the Socialists constituted the foundation of the entire edifice, to the extent that the development of the new international strategy was a logical corollary of the party's internal aggiornamento. After the breakdown in PCF—PS relations in late 1977, and the defeat of the disunited Left in March 1978, a redefinition of the PCF's domestic strategy appeared inevitable, although the party still repeatedly proclaimed its willingness to conclude political agreements with the Socialists.10 However, the intellectuals' hopes for a development of the two pillars of the new international strategy were progressively undermined after March 1978: the PCF's endorsement of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan simply put the issue of strategic orientation beyond any doubt. With regard to the first question, even a cursory glance at the PCF's official pronouncements on the role of the Soviet Union (and socialist countries more generally) in the international system showed how little the party's basic approach had really changed between 1975 and 1980. The advent of ‘Eurocommunism’ notwithstanding, the PCF continued to regard the activities of the socialist camp in an extremely favourable light. In this sense, the PCF remained almost totally consistent in its public declarations on the issue throughout this period. It is hard to find, for example, a single instance in which the international strategy of the Soviet state and its allies was directly criticized by the PCF between 1975 and 1979. The PCF praised Soviet support for indigenous revolutions in Ethiopia and Afghanistan in 1978, after openly welcoming the massive expedition of Cuban forces which enabled the pro-Soviet MPLA (Mouvement Populaire pour la Libération d'Angola) to win the Angolan civil war in 1976. Similarly, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in early 1979 saw the PCF side resolutely with the Soviet ally.11 In late 1979 the NATO decision to introduce Pershing missiles to counter the threat posed by Soviet SS-20S was denounced by the PCF in exactly the same (p.270) terms used by the USSR.12 Throughout this period the principal objectives of the foreign policy of socialist states were presented in almost unreservedly positive terms. In November 1977, at the height of the PCF's ‘Eurocommunism’ phase, Jean Kanapa emphasized the goals of the international communist movement: ‘agir pour la paix, la détente, le désarmement, la co-opération internationale’.13

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Communist Internationalism Revisited In September 1978 the publication of L'URSS et nous was presented as a radical reassessment of the entire Soviet experience by the PCF. As will subsequently be contended, this was arguably true of those chapters which dealt with domestic social and political developments in the USSR. The authors' conclusions regarding the foreign policy of the Soviet state, however, were quite categorical: since 1945, the USSR had worked unceasingly towards the preservation of ‘peace’ in the international system. It followed that ‘les initiatives diplomatiques de l'Union Soviétique vont globalement dans le sens de la paix, de la détente, de la sécurité collective, du désarmement, de l'organisation de la co-existence pacifique’.14 At the twenty-third Congress of the PCF in 1979, Georges Marchais spoke in equally eulogistic tones of ‘l'apport des pays socialistes au mouvement de l'humanité dans son ensemble’.15 In this sense, when the PCF expressed its unqualified support for the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in early 1980, the party was only being consistent with its established practice of equating the foreign policy of the Soviet state with the promotion of international peace and security. Given the PCF's unchanging view of the role of the Soviet state in the international system, the prospects for the elaboration of a new international strategy based on the principles of ‘Eurocommunism’ were not particularly promising, especially after the defeat of the Left in March 1978 removed the domestic (p.271) political rationale for such an undertaking. In fact, even during the relatively short-lived phase of the PCF's entente cordiale with the PCI and the PCE, the French party leadership always set clear limits to the strategic potential of the principle of ‘Eurocommunism’. An examination of official pronouncements between 1975 and 1978 showed that the PCF offered three standard arguments to explain its reticence. Firstly, the three ‘Eurocommunism’ parties were following quite different domestic political strategies, which necessarily made any identification of common political objectives more problematic.16 Secondly, the PCF argued that the establishment of regional associations or ‘centres’ of Communist Parties would represent a return to the discredited practices of the international communist movement, which had imposed a uniform political line on all parties without regard for the specific conditions prevailing in their respective countries.17 Thirdly, the party leadership often tried to divert the issue by extending the political implications of the concept of ‘Eurocommunism’ beyond the confines of the vieux continent, pointing to the endorsement of its underlying principles by organizations as geographically disparate as the Communist Parties of Mexico and Japan. None of these three explanations, however, directly addressed the basic question of whether ‘Eurocommunist’ parties could agree on a common political vision of Europe. The fact that this issue was generally passed over in silence during the first two years of the PCF's collaboration with its Italian and Spanish comrades at least left open the possibility of future co-operation in this area. From the middle of 1977 (before the breakdown of the agreement with the Socialists) the Page 5 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited PCF embarked upon a programme inv which its protection of French national interests was aggressively asserted. This crusade was initiated by a poster campaign, launched during the second half of 1977, on protectionist themes (p. 272) (‘Fabriquons franços’), before rapidly gathering momentum in the run-up to the European elections of June 1979. It immediately became evident that the adoption of such an inward-looking posture by the PCF would severely compromise prospects of greater co-operation with other European political forces. For example, the PCF's inflexible nationalism instantly produced a serious political rift with the PCE over the question of Spain's membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). The PCE, in common with all major political forces in post-Franquist Spain, supported its country's entry into the Common Market on economic and political grounds. Membership of the Common Market would both revigorate the Spanish economy, and consolidate the political transition from authoritarian to democratic government in the Iberian Peninsula. The PCF, however, showed little regard for the principle of international solidarity in its consistent opposition to Spanish entry into the EEC. The party's position was simply summarized by Jean Kanapa in 1977: ‘Nous nous plaçons à ce sujet d'un point de vue national: l'adhésion de l'Espagne accentuerait considérablement les difficultés de notre paysannerie … mais aussi plusieurs secteurs de notre industrie.’18 This position, which could be extended to include several other economic and political issues, ultimately indicated that the PCF could be interested in cooperating with European political forces only to the extent that such collaboration did not impinge upon its role as the self-appointed protector of French national interests.19 As the party's new image crystallized in this fashion after 1978, the PCF eventually gave up even the pretence of seeking to cooperate with the European Left in areas of common interest. In April 1977 an article on the EEC in the Cahiers du communisme, (p.273) while echoing the party's traditional fears of West German domination of Europe, could still state that the construction of ‘l'Europe des travailleurs … passe par le renforcement de la coopération entre communistes ouest-européens, [et] suppose en outre L'établissement de nouveaux rapports avec les forces démocratiques les plus larges, en particulier les partis socialistes et sociaux-démocrates …’.20 It is rather startling to measure the distance travelled by the PCF over the following two years by comparing the tone and substance of this piece with another article by Jacques Denis in the Cahiers du communisme in May 1979, at the height of the party's electoral campaign. In this presentation of the PCF's European programme, not only (domestic political imperatives oblige) had all references to an alliance with Socialist parties disappeared altogether: the author did not identify a single issue on which the PCF and its former ‘Eurocommunism’ partners shared a common approach. The PCI was hurriedly Page 6 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited dispatched in a passing reference to the Communist group in the Assembly. As for the PCE, its name was not even considered worthy of mention.21 How did party intellectuals react to the process described in the above paragraphs? By 1979 it was clear that the PCF, far from reconsidering its analysis of the place of the USSR in the world arena, had never really turned its back on the traditional ‘Kominternian’ conception of international politics, which, as previously noted, recognized the primacy of the role of the Soviet state in the lutte des classes à l'écbelle mondiale. It was equally manifest that, far from moving in the direction of an alternative international strategy based on the idea of ‘Eurocommunism’, the PCF had established itself as a nationalist and almost xenophobic force in French politics, using quasi-Barrèsian language to denounce any potential threat to the sovereignty of the French nation.22 Interestingly enough, whilst party intellectuals reacted (p.274) strongly to the nationalist drift of the PCF, the question of the party's strategic alignment on the Soviet Union was only given serious consideration after the Afghanistan issue came to the surface in 1980. At the Vitry meeting23 in December 1978, and during the party's European election campaign, critical voices were raised against the ‘chauvinist’ themes which were slipping into the PCF's discourse.24 But the issue of the party's conception of its role in international politics was not often addressed by intellectuals in 1978–9. There were three basic reasons for this oversight. The introspective course taken by the intra-party debate after March 1978 to some extent precluded the examination of such matters. If strategic issues were considered at all, they tended to be focused on domestic (i.e. the future of the Union de la Gauche in France) rather than international questions. Furthermore, the external implications of the PCF's nationalist tendencies were not immediately obvious before 1980. There was no international crisis between East and West in 1978 and 1979 which was of sufficient magnitude to bring out the underlying tension between the party's implacable defence of French national sovereignty and its strategic alignment on the Soviet Union. The most significant reason, however, was that intellectuals were already embroiled in a controversial debate over the PCF's assessment of the internal achievements of Soviet-style socialism. The PCF and the question of Stalin

Ever since the heated debates over the question of membership of the Third International at the founding Congress of the French Communist Party in December 1920, the Soviet Union was never far removed from the minds of the mass membership. In the era of Maurice Thorez and Waldeck Rochet the direction and terms of intra-party discussions were often centrally determined by the course of events in the USSR. From the signature of the Nazi–Soviet (p. 275) pact in August 1939 to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia twenty-nine years later, the PCF was immediately (and often adversely) affected by the domestic and external ramifications of decisions taken by the Soviet party Page 7 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited leadership, as was shown in Chapter 4. In the 1970s the intellectual debate within the PCF was broadly concerned with the evaluation of the Soviet experience, both from a historical and contemporary perspective. The multiple ramifications of this issue eventually became embroiled in the intra-party dispute after March 1978, and the party leadership's failure adequately to address the fundamental issues raised by the critics played an important role in the subsequent process of intellectual disaffiliation from the PCF. There were three historical questions which engaged the attention of party intellectuals in the 1970s, and the problem of Stalinism was at the centre of each of them. The major drive for a re-examination of the nature of Stalinism in France came from the translation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's L'Archipel du Goulag,25 which unleashed a passionate intellectual controversy within the Left over the political and historical significance of Stalinism.26 The first priority for the PCF, from this angle, was to assess the intrinsic nature of Stalinism as a political phenomenon in the USSR. The official position of the PCF on the Stalin problem underwent considerable transformations in the decades which followed Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinist crimes at the twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. In 1956 the Thorezian leadership went so far as to deny the very existence of the secret speech. After the issue shifted to the wider question of reform in the Soviet Union, the PCF minimized the political implications of the document, and adopted a lukewarm approach to the process of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union.27 In May 1979, however, at the twenty-third PCF Congress, the final resolution declared that the party's attitude towards the problem of Stalinism was ‘dépourvue detoute ambiguité… Nous avons prononçé (p.276) contre le Stalinisme une condamnation sans appel parce que les conceptions et les pratiques que recouvre cette expression sont totalement étrangères à notre idéal.’28 How had such a shift occurred, and how satisfied were party intellectuals with the PCF's analysis of the question of Stalinism in the Soviet Union? The first major work by a party historian on the subject was Jean Ellenstein's Histoire du phénomène stalinien,29 which received the official seal of approval in l'Humanité.30 Party leader Marchais used the term ‘Stalinism’ in public for the first time in the PCF's history. In September 1978 Alexandre Adler further developed the concept in his contribution to the collective work L'URSS et nous. Despite this departure from Thorezian tradition, however, the substantive interpretation put forward remained broadly within conventional boundaries of Communist historical revisionism. As Jean Ellenstein stated in the closing stages of his argument: ‘Le phénomène stalinien—pour tragique qu'il fût—n'en demeure pas moins limité dans le temps et l'espace.’31 The first restriction imposed on the phenomenon concerned its political and intellectual origins. Like Ellenstein, Adler refused to see any continuity between the theory and practice Page 8 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited of Leninism on the one hand, and the development of the Stalinist system on the other. The origins of the latter, therefore, were firmly rooted in the prerevolutionary social and political traditions of Russia.32 Having preserved the political virginity of Marx and Lenin by historicizing Stalinism in this way, Ellenstein and Adler further reduced the systemic implications of the phenomenon by pointing to the great achievements of the supreme leader: industrialization, the defeat of Nazi Germany, the struggle against imperialism … Ultimately, as will be seen, these intellectual contortions demonstrated that the PCF leadership was careful to develop its analysis of Stalinism in such a way as not to leave the door open to intellectual recriminations in the counter-community. If, after all, Stalinism had originated in the specific socio-historical conditions of tsarist Russia, it could never have amounted to a serious problem (p.277) in the French Communist Party. Furthermore, if the problem of Stalinism ended in the Soviet Union with the death of the dictator, there could be no conceivable basis for examining the survival of Stalinist mores in the PCF twenty-five years after the disappearance of their creator. On the whole, none the less, party intellectuals welcomed the changes in the PCF's official evaluation of Stalinism in the USSR, even though many were disappointed that the concept remained relatively static in its scope. In a preface to Dominique Lecourt's work Lyssenko: Histoire réelle d'une science prolétarienne,33 Louis Althusser emphatically declared that Stalinism was not simply a problem for historians: ‘le système répressif stalinien, camps compris, subsiste en URSS, comme y subsiste l'essentiel des pratiques staliniennes dans la vie sociale, politique, et culturelle’.34 The problems this question might have raised were soon overshadowed by a related historical issue which was of more immediate significance to party intellectuals after 1975: the nature and substance of Stalinism in the French Communist Party itself. If, as suggested, the party leadership intended to prevent the debate on Stalinism from turning into a search for the (numerous) skeletons concealed in the cupboards of the Place du Colonel Fabien, the exercise rapidly produced exactly the opposite result. This was partly the consequence of the natural dynamic of the argument. For many party members of the Resistance and Cold War generations, consideration of the Stalin question immediately brought to the fore a host of (mostly unpleasant) memories of their own dealings with the little Stalins who had proliferated in the PCF at that time. However, the most decisive impetus for a re-examination of the historical impact of Stalinism on the PCF came from outside the party. Also stimulated by debates around Solzhenitsyn's work, many former members of the PCF began to produce their memoirs after 1974, graphically recounting their experiences of French (p.278) Stalinism.35 These pressures from both inside and outside the counter-community eventually produced a response from the party authorities. At a symbolic level, the PCF finally (if rather grudgingly) Page 9 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited admitted that the accuracy of official accounts of several important episodes in the internal history of the party was open to question. In January 1977, for example, a declaration of the Politburo recognized that the PCF delegation at the twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956 had read the complete text of Khrushchev's secret speech.36 In denying the very existence of this document, Maurice Thorez and his associates had, therefore, wilfully misled the peuple communiste.37 At a substantive level, as already noted, the PCF sponsored the works of a number of party historians which directly addressed the question of the strategic impact of Stalinism on the PCF. The articles published in the Cahiers d'histoire de I'Institut Maurice Thorez38 in 1978–9 clearly demonstrated the strategic dependence of the PCF on the Third International in the 1920s and 1930s. This further undermined the traditional iconography of Maurice Thorez as the brilliant political tactician who almost single-handedly convinced the Communist International of the need to create Popular Fronts all over Europe. In an interview published in France-Nouvelle in late 1979 former Politburo member Raymond Guyot went even further, suggesting that the PCF's strategic subordination to the Soviet Communist Party did not end with the dissolution of the Komintern. The French party leadership remained under Soviet influence ‘pendant toute une période’39 after 1943. The problem with these symbolic and substantive changes in the PCF's evaluation of its own Stalinist (p.279) legacy, however, was that they arrived too late to stem the extension of the scope of the arguments, particularly after the development of the intra-party dispute in March 1978. In the same way as the debate over the intrinsic evaluation of the Stalin phenomenon in the Soviet Union inevitably raised the question of its historical impact on the PCF, the reopening of the latter dossier could not be prevented from developing into a wider examination of the contemporary ramifications of the Stalinist legacy in the PCF. The outbreak of the intra-party dispute acted as a catalyst for this recentrage from past to present. From this angle, the major pressure behind the shift in the analytical focus of intellectuals was provided by the policies and attitudes adopted by the PCF leadership after March 1978. Before examining the specific issues raised by the critics, however, it is worth noting that many intellectuals believed, like Henri Fiszbin,40 that the issue of Stalinism in the party was part of a more general problem which could not be restricted to a purely vertical opposition between leadership and mass membership. Gérard Belloin summed up what was plainly a widespread feeling among Communist intellectuals when he wrote of the existence of a ‘Stalinisme ordinaire’ in the counter-community, consisting of a set of activities, behavioural norms, and ways of thinking which had crystallized in the party's conscience collective over the years.41 A phenomenology of this form of Stalinism would include an extremely wide spectrum of practices, ranging from the triumphalist undertones of Communist rhetoric,42 to the imperviousness of many rank-andfile party members to any form of criticism.43 The principal thrust of the Page 10 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited intellectuals' critique, however, was directed at the institutional aspects of Stalinism in the PCF, as revealed by the practices of its leadership during the intra-party dispute. The most commonly identified legacy of the Stalinist period to the PCF were the political and administrative methods with which (p.280) the party leadership fought the intellectuals after March 1978. As noted in the previous chapter, the PCF authorities eventually did not refrain from using the entire battery of resources at their disposal to quell the internal rebellion of the contestataires. It came as no surprise, therefore, when the rebels responded to this campaign of vilification by accusing the authorities of resorting to classically Stalinist techniques of leadership and control.44 The PCF's official reaction to these charges was equally predictable. At the twenty-third Congress in May 1979 the resolution affirmed that the party had drawn all the necessary conclusions from its Stalinist past: ‘nous inspirons notre comportement de l'idée qu'il faut toujours être en garde contre la tentation de substituer les facilités de l'autoritarisme à l'effort démocratique de conviction et de lutte politique’.45 Given the rather wide gap between this admirable declaration of intent and the brutal methods deployed by the party leadership to suppress the internal rebellion after 1978, it would be something of an understatement to affirm that intellectuals were not entirely convinced of the PCF's sincerity on this question. A second important Stalinist legacy identified by intellectuals concerned the extent of the evolution of the PCF's domestic political strategy since the 1960s. The immediate thrust behind this interrogation was provided by the debate over the defeat of the Union de la Gauche in March 1978. The issue of the PCF's responsibility for the electoral defeat of the Left rapidly opened up a wider discussion of the party's effective commitment to its proclaimed strategic goals, and lamented the leadership's failure to modify the direction of the PCF's strategy by taking full account of the social and intellectual evolution of French society. In his articles in Le Monde, for example, Jean Ellenstein referred to the Stalinist ‘blocages’ which had caused the ‘retard mis par le PCF à se transformer et à prendre en compte les problèmes nouveaux posés par l'évolution de la société françhise depuis vingt-cinq ans’.46 At the Vitry meeting in December 1978 Christine Buci-Glucksmann echoed the views of many party intellectuals when she argued that the most serious consequence of the PCF's belated (p.281) de-Stalinization had been its complete failure to adapt to key social and political changes on the Left in the 1960s and 1970s. The events of May 1968, and the subsequent rise of alternative conceptions of politics based on issues such as race, gender, and the environment, had always caught the PCF off balance.47 The underlying cause of this inadequacy, according to the critics, was the leadership's imperviousness to new ideas, itself a function of the traditional Stalinist belief that the party's vision of politics was ‘scientific’.48 As Gérard Page 11 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited Belloin noted, this was ‘une conception de la pratique politique qui ne peut s'opérer que sous la direction des états-majors et fait de ceux-ci, en tout et pour tout, les détenteurs du dernier mot, le mot de ceux qui savent ce qui est bon pour les dirigés’.49 From this vanguardist perspective, the PCF's initial reaction to the emergence of new political issues was almost necessarily hostile. Since no political force other than the PCF could advance the cause of the French working class, any non-communist political strategy could only be (at best) the work of misguided simpletons or (at worst) the product of a calculated conspiracy to weaken the parti de la classe ouvrière. This Manichaean view, which had clearly characterized the PCF's approach to politics during the Stalinist period, was alleged by most critics to have survived in the leadership's practices in the 1960s and 1970s, and ultimately led the PCF into its strategic impasse after March 1978. The party leadership's response to this line of attack constituted a characteristic exercise in self-justification, which, again, illustrated the tendency to limit the Stalinist phenomenon in space and time. On the one hand, the PCF accepted the critics' argument that the party had failed to draw the necessary political consequences from Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956. As Georges Marchais declared at the twenty-third Congress in May 1979, the PCF had failed to initiate ‘la réfléxion sur les voies originales adaptées à nos conditions, par lesquelles le peuple de France peut aller au socialisme’. But the party had seen the light eventually: ‘Nous avons accompli un travail d'analyse et de réfléxion, une véritable recherche théorique et politique, aboutissant, par étapes (p.282) successives, aux conclusions du XXIIème Congrès.’50 According to this version of party history, therefore, the 1970s represented the PCF's strategic epistemological break with its Stalinist heritage. The natural implication of the argument, however, was that party leaders Maurice Thorez and Waldeck Rochet bore the brunt of responsibility for the party's inadequate adaptation to changing social and political realities. Any Stalinist leanings the PCF mighthave had were decisively expunged only by the Marchais leader-ship.51 This notion of the strategic retard of the PCF soon acquiredan almost incantatory character, being repeatedly invoked not only to dispel accusations of neo-Stalinism from intellectual quarters, but also to justify the immediate political strategy of the Marchais leadership, and even to explain every conceivable setback suffered by the party in the 1980s. This diversion of the intellectuals' attack to exonerate the Marchais leadership from any blame for the strategic retard of the PCF could not survive serious critical scrutiny. The notion of retard had, at first glance, a rather limited explanatory potential. To argue, for example, that the PCF had been unable to assimilate new social and intellectal trends in France after 1956 simply because the party had belatedly recognized their significance was merely to restate the problem. Even on its own terms, however, the argument was difficult to sustain. The plausibility of the Marchais claim that the PCF's domestic political strategy Page 12 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited fully abandoned les séquelles du Stalinisme only at the twenty-second party Congress in 1976 rested on the validity of three separate arguments, none of which could withstand closer examination. Firstly, the argument had to demonstrate why 1976 was the annus mirabilis. In other words, in what way policies adopted at the twenty-second Congress represented a landmark in the party's strategic orientation. The formal principle of ‘Socialisme aux couleurs de la France’, adopted at the end of the proceedings, was certainly welcomed by most party intellectuals as a further step (p.283) in the PCF's gradual march towards national political integration, but only to the extent that this principle was substantively embodied in the strategy of Union de la Gauche. In any event, the Congress did not strike an undivided chorus of approval among party intellectuals. The PCF's decision to jettison its standard reference to the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in its constitution provoked a stiff response from intellectual intégristes such as Louis Althusser, for whom the party had, by its action, ‘deprived itself of the possibility of thinking the “destruction” and “withering away” of the state, except in vague and edulcorated [terms]’.52 Most intellectuals who approved the programmatic change were, none the less, extremely critical of the methods used by the Marchais leadership to railroad the issue through the counter-community, particularly with regard to the absence of a serious internal discussion of the question before its unanimous endorsement by the party Congress.53 Independently of the assessment of the intellectuals, it might be added that the whole question was rather esoteric. The rejection of the concept of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ was hardly a sufficient condition for the adoption of a non-Stalinist political strategy. The Portuguese Communist Party had, after all, acted in precisely this fashion after 1974,54 without in any way impugning its well-deserved reputation as the inflexible sentinel of Stalinism in Western Europe. The choice of the year 1976 as the point de rupture with the PCF's Stalinist past also begged the obvious question raised by intellectuals after March 1978: had the party's political strategy remained the same between 1976 and 1979, or had there been what Althusser described as a ‘tournant stratégique secret… dissimulé sous la continuité de l'ancien langage’55 by PCF authorities? Intellectuals may have been divided in their estimate of the twenty-second Congress's position in relation to the party's (p.284) overall strategic aggiornamento, but none was prepared to accept the patently inaccurate view that the PCF's conception of its role in French politics had remained unaltered over the previous few years. The change in the party's attitude towards the Union de la Gauche had been too brutal for the critics to have any illusions on this subject. It should be noted, however, that few of the contestataires had any clear ideas about the direction in which the party was moving since the breakdown of left-wing unity. The most widespread feeling was simply expressed

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Communist Internationalism Revisited by Christine Buci-Glucksmann at the Vitry meeting in December 1978: ‘Nous n'avons plus de stratégic’56 The third underlying element of the Marchais argument concerning the strategic centrality of the twenty-second Congress consisted of the claim that 1976 marked a clean break with the political strategy pursued by his predecessors, Maurice Thorez and Waldeck Rochet. At first glance, this view appeared to have much in common with previously cited strictures of party intellectuals against the inadequate response of the PCF to social and intellectual changes in France during the trente glorieuses. The similarity between the two positions was only superficial. Unlike party authorities, intellectuals had neither the inclination nor the interest to engage in the type of self-legitimating exercise undertaken by the Marchais leadership after 1978. The critics wanted to identify the general sources of the party's strategic weaknesses, and not simply to lay the blame for what had gone wrong at the door of specific individuals. In any case, most intellectuals who recognized the excessive dependence of the PCF on a Stalinist conception of politics in the 1950s and 1960s acknowledged the positive role played by Thorez and Rochet in initiating the party's move towards greater strategic autonomy. It had been Maurice Thorez who had proposed a revival of the old programmatic alliance between Communists and Socialists at the fifteenth Congress of the PCF in June 1959, and Waldeck Rochet who had taken the first decisive steps towards a greater independence of French Communism from the Soviet Union. Moreover, it should be noted that most party intellectuals of earlier generations who were personally acquainted with these two leaders had retained an extremely positive image of their (p.285) personalities. Hélène Parmelin, for example, always an indefatigable campaigner against Stalinism in the PCF, none the less remembered Maurice Thorez as a man of immense culture, whose overall record as party leader and statesman had been undeniably beneficial. As she confessed readily: ‘je l'aimais beaucoup’.57 Waldeck Rochet's public persona in the counter-community was, in at least one respect, the opposite of his distinguished predecessor: he was modest and discreet to the point of being selfeffacing, and never appeared to impose his views on the party as a whole. None the less, this unassuming figure won unanimous intellectual recognition for activating the PCF's strategic aggiornamento after 1964, not only with respect to the Soviet Union, but also in terms of the party's relations with the noncommunist Left and the intellectuals.58 From the point of view of most intellectuals, therefore, the problem with the PCF's strategy under Thorez and Rochet was not that it had remained unaltered, but that it had not changed quickly enough.59

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Communist Internationalism Revisited Rethinking the Soviet Experience Beyond the political and administrative methods used by the Communist leadership against dissident intellectuals, and the unresolved problem of the party's strategic direction, the question which was regarded as the acid test of the PCF's willingness to liberate itself from the shackles of the Stalinist era was its official evaluation of the nature of the modern Soviet system. Within the problematic of the PCF's Stalinism, this interest was easily explainable. Since the early 1930s the PCF had always taken (p.286) considerable pains to present the domestic achievements of the Soviet system in positive terms. Soviet Communists were engaged in constructing a society founded upon the principles of Marx and Lenin. As their disciples, French Communists were naturally engrossed in the development of this momentous process. But the affinity did not end there. Ultimately, the case the PCF was making in France was anchored on the success of the socialist experience in the Soviet Union. Thus, Stalinist Russia acquired the character of a model society, prefiguring the socialist system which the PCF would institute in France at the appropriate moment. Given the historic role occupied by the Soviet myth in the affective universe of French Stalinism, it was quite natural for party intellectuals to regard the PCF's evaluation of the Soviet system during the 1970s as a key indicator of its real desire to distance itself from the practices of the Stalinist period. By the same token, the PCF's official representation of Soviet society could be interpreted as a reflection of the type of socialism the party favoured in France. However much the party leadership emphasized the different conditions in which the French and Soviet parties operated, the relationship between the PCF's evaluation of Soviet-style socialism and its own projet de société was clearly dialectical. In addition to these internal considerations, party intellectuals were also caught up as the committed observers of a wider process of social and political demystification, in which left-wing intellectuals ruthlessly burned all their previous idols. No single cause can, of course, account for this systematic destruction of the political models which had captivated the attention of the French Left for decades: the Soviet as well as the Chinese, Cuban, and Third World states. The role played by the debate over Solzhenitsyn's work was again significant, but two considerations of a more general nature could also be suggested. Firstly, the principal purveyor of external political myths in French society ceased to propagate its message with the same intensity in the 1970s. This retrenchment was partly undertaken, as will be noted, for self-regarding reasons, the PCF realizing that it had a considerable political interest in promoting an endogenous social and political project. The signing of the Programme commun de gouvernement by the parties of the Left in 1972 also served, from this perspective, to redirect the focus of the French intellectual community towards internal political goals. But this retrenchment (p.287) was also partly a reflection of the fact that the party's ‘official’ Marxism, which acted Page 15 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited as the indirect legitimating agent of the social and political experience of all existing Communist states, gradually found its traditional intellectual hegemony eroded by the emergence of alternative political ideologies and movements in France. This leads directly to the second point: these alternative forces (feminism, antiracism, regionalism), although pursuing radically different goals, did not offer existing social and political systems as their ancillary models of intellectual reference. This was not because these political movements lacked a specifically utopian dimension, but rather because the millennial vision they espoused bore no relation to the external world of existing states: either, as in the cases of movements based on the issues of gender and race, all the units of the international system were regarded as equally corrupted by phallocratic and discriminatory practices; or, as in the case of French regionalist movements, the practical and ideological focus of action was directed towards the transcendence of the modern nation-state. In sum, these different political forces were more inward-looking in their approach to politics, and this undoubtedly contributed to the declining appeal of foreign social and political ‘models’ in French intellectual circles during the 1970s. The reconsideration of the Soviet model

The focus of Communist intellectuals on the actual attributes of the Soviet system was, as noted above, part of a wider movement which sought to question the validity of established interpretative paradigms. Pierre Grémion described this process in a typically (French) intellectualist fashion: ‘Le retour à l'expérience pour fonder une attitude et un langage sur l'autre Europe s'inscrit dans un mouvement de rupture avec la théorisation intellectualiste pour instaurer une démarche prenant appui sur une restauration-restitution de l'experiénce sociale des sociétés de l'Est européen.’60 In this context, there was a perceptible change in the PCF's official attitude to the social and political realities of Soviet-style socialism after 1975. For reasons mentioned above, these changes were (p.288) welcomed by party intellectuals. In the final analysis, however, the PCF kept its criticism of the Soviet system within clearly identifiable boundaries, before effectively reverting to a quasi-Stalinist form of identification with la patrie du socialisme réel after January 1980. This apparent return to the golden era of pro-Soviet internationalism severed the final threads by which Communist intellectuals still hung to the PCF, and thus paved the way for the widespread disaffiliation witnessed in the years which followed. The first phase in the PCF's adoption of a more critical stance towards the Soviet social and political system lasted for three years, from late 1975 to the autumn of 1978. The general direction of this movement was characterized by an official tendency to highlight negative features of Soviet-style socialism, ranging from the use of psychiatric terror against political dissidents,61 and the generally insufficient level of political democracy in the country,62 to the persistence of the Page 16 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited cult of the personality under the Brezhnev leadership.63 This critical trend, which culminated in the publication of L'URSS et nous in September 1978, was greeted with overwhelming approval by the vast majority of party intellectuals, even though there were considerable differences in approach to the question. There was basic agreement, none the less, that the PCF should continue to distance itself from the negative aspects of Soviet-style Communism, and thus promote its own distinctive political project for the construction of socialism in French society. The few dissonant voices which were raised against the party's drift away from the traditional encomium of the Soviet system came from veteran Stalinists such as Jeannette Vermeersch,64 the wife of former party leader Maurice Thorez. The existence of (p.289) similar pro-Soviet sentiments among party intellectuals cannot be established beyond doubt, given the general absence of public recriminations against the PCF's anti-Soviet pronouncements between 1975 and 1978. It is particularly important to avoid drawing unsubstantiated conclusions on this delicate subject. The absence of significant public intellectual protest in the counter-community against the PCF's criticisms of the Soviet system does not imply, of course, that this aspect of the PCF's ‘Eurocommunism’ met with universal approval inside the party. On the other hand, it is necessary to keep a healthy distance from sensationalist accounts which purported to identify occult pro-Soviet underlings in every nook and cranny of the party organization.65 The truth probably lay somewhere in the aurea mediocritas. The best indirect evidence of persistent pro-Soviet sentiments among Communist intellectuals between 1975 and 1978 comes from the published memoirs of venerable party figures, whose long-standing loyalty to the principles of proletarian internationalism was well established. In 1976 and 1977, for example (at the height of the PCF's ‘Eurocommunist’ phase), the Éditions Sociales published the memoirs of Georges Cogniot, a brilliant normalien who had been a loyal servant of the PCF since joining the party in 1921. The memoirs made no direct comment on the PCF's immediate political strategy, but Cogniot's presentation of his experiences in the USSR made it abundantly clear that he did not think the Soviet political system suffered from any serious shortcomings, even under Stalin.66 Similarly, the memoirs of André Wurmser, another vieux routier stalinien, went out of their way to depict the Soviet system in an extremely favourable light, arguing that the problems of Stalinism, for instance, had been greatly exaggerated in Khrushchev's secret speech. Furthermore, the dysfunctions of the system could not be blamed on a single individual: ‘Staline ignorait l'ampleur du désastre.’67 (p.290) Despite their implicit disagreement with the critical thrust of the PCF's assessment of the Soviet system between 1975 and 1978, neither Cogniot nor Wurmser expressed their reservations in public.68 It would be futile to try to explain the reasons for this silence in any conclusive fashion. It may simply be Page 17 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited pointed out that, in the case of both men (and pro-Soviet figures in the PCF more generally), the primary quality pervading their work in the party organization was loyalty. In the countless years that they had faithfully dedicated to the Communist cause, both Cogniot and Wurmser had served the PCF and the international communist movement with a sense of unquestioning devotion, which at times had bordered on blind fanaticism. For such militants, the principle that le parti a toujours raison had to be respected at all times and in all circumstances, even—and perhaps especially—on those rare occasions when le parti a tort. In any event, these putative disagreements with the party's official line proved to be relatively short-lived. By the end of 1978, to the considerable alarm of most party intellectuals, the PCF began to reverse the process of critical evaluation of the Soviet system. The balance sheet of socialism

The publication of L'URSS et nous in September 1978 paradoxically marked a negative turning-point in the direction of the PCF's critical evaluation of the Soviet social and political system. Between the publication of this work and the end of 1979, the PCF authorities clearly sought to circumscribe the critical thrust of the assessment of Soviet-style socialism by imposing an interpretative strait-jacket on the proceedings. The party leadership initiated this process at the Vitry meeting in December 1978, when Georges Marchais affirmed that the balance sheet of socialist states was ‘globalement positif’69—a term which was subsequently repeated in the final resolution of the twenty-third Congress six months later.70 As has been pointed out,71 this formula had been used by the party leadership in 1974, in the halcyon days of pro-Soviet internationalism. Since no terms in (p.291) Communist discourse were ever used without careful selection, the conscious reversal to such an expression already suggested to many intellectuals that the discussion of the defects of the Soviet system was no longer officially encouraged by the PCF authorities.72 Two highly revealing incidents confirmed the worst fears of party intellectuals. In its official recommendation of L'URSS et nous the Politburo had invited all party members to reflect over the contents of the work.73 Taking this injunction à la lettre, the Paris Federation of the PCF, under the leadership of Henri Fiszbin, decided to organize a series of public meetings to discuss its principal themes. In an attempt to extend this discussion beyond the confines of the counter-community, Fiszbin invited several non-communist intellectuals to participate in the proceedings. The reaction from the PCF headquarters was as immediate as it was brutal: the meetings were simply to be cancelled.74 If this event illustrated the party's persistent tendencies towards solipsism, the PCF also rapidly began to indicate that discussion of the Soviet experience within the party could not go beyond certain limits. In November 1978 two French Communists published a highly critical account of everyday life in the Soviet Union,75 based on their personal experiences in the country between 1972 and 1974. In contrast to the gentle euphemisms favoured by the authors of L'URSS Page 18 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited et nous, this work provided a graphic portrayal of the political as well as the economic, socio-cultural, and ethnic problems which were endemic in the Soviet system. The PCF authorities' reaction to this publication constituted a reversal to the best traditions of Stalinist literary criticism. The authors were denounced in the party press for having ‘grossièrement dèformé la réalité soviétique et la politique de leur parti’,76 and the work was banned from the annual book fair organized by the Bouches-du-Rhône Federation of the PCF. It was true that the Kéhayans had committed a double crime: not only had they suggested that the Soviet system was in a much more advanced state of decay than the PCF was officially prepared to accept; they (p.292) had also had the effrontery to suggest that the French party leadership's treatment of its own intellectual dissidents bore a strange resemblance to traditional Soviet practices in this field. Nous découvrions des éditoriaux dans lesquels on déclarait péremptoirement à des militants qu'ils s'étaient trompés de parti, comme Ton disait à Moscou que Soljénitsine s'était trompé de pays. Nous reçevions en pleine figure la pesanteur d'un appareil qui refuse de progresser dans la voie de la démocratie, et de s'aider de la confrontation des idées par l'expression fibre de la pensée. Quel facteur, sinon la pratique sovietique, peut done modifier le comportement de dirigeants qu'anime la crainte d'être débordés par la base et qui regardent d'un mauvais œil les luttes spontanées, qualitatives, n'obéissant ni au contrôle ni à la direction du Parti?77 This equation of the PCF's internal practices with those of its Soviet parti frère expressed the frustration of many intellectuals with the increasing number of obstacles placed in the way of the development of their critique of the Soviet system. Many critics began to view the closure of the debate on the nature of Soviet-type socialism as a premonition of the party's gradual but inexorable realignment on Soviet positions—a process which was finally confirmed by the party's reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Soviet internationalism revisited

The PCF's unqualified approval of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in January 1980 reopened the bitter wounds which had been festering in the countercommunity since the outbreak of the intra-party dispute in March 1978. For many intellectuals, the Afghanistan issue completed the PCF's realignment on the traditional principles of communist internationalism. The most telling evidence which could be adduced to support this view was the perceptible change in the PCF's official evaluation of Soviet-style socialism. The outward appearance of analytical continuity was preserved: the common declaration which followed Georges Marchais's discussions with Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow Page 19 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited in early January 1980 explicitly referred to the ‘divergences’ which divided (p. 293) the two parties on questions of democracy and political pluralism.78 It soon became evident, however, that this continuity was purely formal. The party authorities refused to take any practical steps to encourage further critical discussion of the nature of the Soviet system after 1980. In fact, a close examination of the PCF's official pronouncements on this question after the Afghanistan issue showed an unmistakable tendency towards regression from several critical stances adopted by the party since 1975. Two examples will suffice to illustrate this phenomenon. The first may be taken as an indication of the change in the PCF's evaluation of social and economic problems arising in the Soviet system. In L'URSS et nous, for example, Maurice Decaillot had criticized the pervasive character of the ‘nomenklatura’ system,79 and argued that some forms of economic exploitation still remained: ‘Il y a encore dépossession des travailleurs, prélèvement et gachis des richesses qu'ils ont crées. Il y a maintien des travailleurs dans la situation de vendeurs de leur force de travail.’80 At the Bobigny meeting between the leadership and party intellectuals in February 1980, however, Georges Marchais presented an idyllic picture of the performance of the Soviet economic system, before categorically affirming that the ‘réalité essentielle’ of the socialist countries ‘réside d'abord et avant tout dans la suppression de l'exploitation et de l'oppression’.81 This whitewashing of the Soviet system was also illustrated by the substantive position adopted by the PCF with regard to Soviet violations of human rights. In late February 1980 Georges Marchais announced the formation of a ‘Comité de Défense des Libertés et des Droits de l'Homme dans le Monde’, whose purpose would be to demonstrate the PCF's uncompromising attachment to the cause of liberty throughout the world. L'Humanité accompanied this announcement by publishing a balance sheet of human rights violations in the international system over the past twenty years:82 the Soviet Union was not cited even once. When, furthermore, leading Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov was sentenced to (p. 294) internal exile at Gorki in late January 1980, the PCF immediately emphasized its disapproval.83 A month later, however, René Andrieu published a violent attack84 against Sakharov, who was slanderously accused, inter alia, of having addressed a message of congratulations to the Chilean dictator Pinochet after his successful golpe in 1973. The PCF's position, from which it did not deviate after 1980, could be summarized in the following terms: Soviet-style socialism was far from perfect, but its capacity for internal regeneration was immense, and would eventually lead to the supercession of all its problems. As noted in the Introduction, the PCF maintained this approach even after it became clear that the Leninist regimes in Eastern Europe had lost all popular legitimacy. Speaking in November 1989, for example, Georges Marchais asserted that events in Eastern Europe were merely the symptoms of a ‘crise de développement’ of socialism. Capitalism, on the other hand, was threatened by a Page 20 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited ‘crise de système’, which would inevitably lead to the collapse of Western economic and socialsystems.85 Divided against itself, pitted against the world

The cumulative impact of the PCF's return to pro-Soviet internationalism, added to the inexorable trend towards the enforcement of ideological uniformity in the counter-community, inevitably destroyed the remaining political and social bases of the party intellectual's affiliation to the PCF. In the short term, the Afghanistan question rekindled the flames of the civil strife which had been raging in the party since March 1978. As Maurice Goldring and Yvonne Quilès noted, PCF intellectuals were divided into ‘deux parties à peu près égales’86 over the position adopted by their party over the Soviet invasion. Two separate petitions were launched, one in support of the official line,87 the other calling for the withdrawal of Soviet troops.88 The deep fissures in (p.295) the party were perhaps best symbolized by the attitude adopted by the five authors of L'URSS et nous: Francis Cohen and Maurice Decaillot signed the ‘official’ petition supporting the PCF leadership; Alexandre Adler was one of the organizers of the counter-petition and, as noted previously, eventually resigned from the PCF a few months later; Léon Robel and Claude Frioux, finally, were so deeply tormented by the whole affair that they refused to sign either document. In the medium and long term, however, the demoralizing effect of the PCF's policies finally overcame the resistance of even the most hardened intellectual dissidents. Those who refused to jump would be unceremoniously pushed out of the counter-community after 1980, as was noted in the case of the organizers of the Rencontres Communistes association. Immediately after the Afghanistan controversy, playwright Antoine Vitez left the PCF (which he had joined in 1957), declaring that he refused to assume the role of ‘l'homme qui emportera dans sa tombe ses silences et ses larmes refoulées’.89 Hélène Parmelin, the anti-Stalinist veteran who had emphatically declared in 1978 that ‘je ne veux pas être et ne serai jamais une intellectuelle détachée’,90 finally resigned from the PCF in December 1980. A few months earlier, Michel Barak, himself about to be expelled by his cell, had published his work on the intra-party dispute, which included a significant collection of letters sent to him by dissident intellectuals between March 1978 and the end of 1979. In an interview given at the time of his book's publication,91 Barak declared that approximately two out of every three of these intellectuals had left the PCF by the middle of 1980. During the 1980s this process of intellectual disaffiliation would be accelerated, as the party's electoral and institutional decline reinforced existing centrifugal pressures within the counter-community. But the substance of the political damage had been accomplished between 1978 and 1980 by the PCF authorities' categorical refusal to accede to demands for strategic coherence, greater internal democracy, as well as the provision of a more positive role for intellectuals in the party. From this point of view, the Afghanistan issue Page 21 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited confirmed the contestataires' view (p.296) that their continued membership of the PCF could no longer be justified. Their efforts to change the party's internal practices had failed; furthermore, the leadership's apparent realignment on Soviet strategic objectives suggested that the PCF was no longer interested in promoting radical change in France. The intellectuals' efforts to transform the vanguardist party from within had plainly failed, but at least the critics could subsequently have taken comfort from the fact that, in initiating the process of rank-and-file disaffiliation from the PCF in the early 1980s, they were acting as the true vanguard of the French working class. Notes:

(1) TF1, 11 Jan. 1980. See excerpts in Le Monde, 13–14 Jan. 1980. (2) See L'Humanté, 5 Nov. 1956. (3) See the resolution adopted by the Politburo, in L'Humanité, 22 Aug. 1968. (4) See, in particular, the articles by Raymond Guyot (18 Aug. 1978) and Martine Monod (21 Aug. 1978). (5) See my M.Phil. thesis, ‘Relations between the PCF and the Soviet Union under Waldeck Rochet’ (Oxford, 1986), 104–11. (6) As party spokesman on foreign affairs Jean Kanapa declared in a report to the Central Committee in April 1975: ‘Nous ne saurions admettre quelque démarche que ce soit qui, au nom de la coexistence pacifique entre Etats, porterait atteinte aux intérêts de la lutte que nous menons contre le pouvoir du grand capital, pour la démocratie et le socialisme.’ See Jean Kanapa, Coexistence pacifique et lutte de classes en 1975 (Paris: PCF, 1975), 29. (7) See Lilly Marcou and Marc Riglet, ‘Du passé font-ils table rase? La Conférence des Partis Communistes Européens’, Revue française de science politique, 6 (Dec. 1976), 1068–9. (8) For an illustration of the PCF's minimalist conception of ‘Eurocommunism’, see the string of platitudes offered by Jacques Denis in an interview (‘Sur l'eurocommunisme et les relations européennes’), Cahiers du communisme, Apr. 1978, 92–108. (9) Francois Hincker, Le Parti Communiste au carrefour (Paris: Albin Michel, 1981), 164. (10) The resolution of the 23rd Congress in May 1979 declared that an alliance with the Socialists was ‘indispensable’, and added: ‘Ce que nous proposons n'a

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Communist Internationalism Revisited pas varié, c'est une union de la gauche claire, forte, et durable …’ See ‘L'Avenir commence maintenant’, Cahiers du communisme, June–July 1979, p. 382. (11) See the article by Yves Moreau in L'Humanité, 7–8 Jan. 1979. (12) See the article by Maxime Gremetz in L'Humanité-Dimanche, 1 Jan. 1980. (13) In a speech given at the PCF Ècole Centrale, published as Le Mouvement communiste international hier et aujourd'hui (Paris: PCF, 1977), 15. (14) A. Adler, F. Cohen, M. Decaillot, C. Frirox, and L. Robel, L'URSS et nous (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1978), 208. The authors euphemistically referred to the ‘tentations d'une politique de grande puissance’ (p. 212) which occasionally marred the conduct of soviet external policy, without, however, drawing any further conclusion from this allusion. (15) Georges Marchis, ‘Rapport au 23ème Congrès du PCF’, Cahiers du communisme, June–July 1979, p. 46. (16) See e.g. the carefully worded statement published after the Madrid meeting between the leaders of the PCF, PCI, and PCE in Mar. 1977, in Cahiers du communisme, Apr. 1977, pp. 108–9. (17) In his speech at the PCF École Centrale in Nov. 1977 (Le Mouvement communiste international, 16), Jean Kanapa argued strongly against any attempt to establish a political line for a large number of communist parties, based on the lowest common denominator of interest: ‘Chercher à définir une stratégie commune à partir [d'une] analyse abstraite … ne peut aboutir qu'à l'élaboration d'une recette stérile, d'un niveau de généralité la rendant inutilisable.’ (18) Ibid. 19. In Dec. 1978 the PCF's official 20-point programme listed the rejection of the widening of EEC membership as its first priority. See ‘Vingt propositions pour l'Europe’, Cahiers du communisme, Jan. 1979, pp. 115–16. It is interesting to note that the attitude of the Communist Parties of the other two candidate countries (Greece and Portugal) was markedly hostile to the principle of EEC membership. (19) Hence the succession of vaguely worded common declarations adopted by the PCF and several insignificant West European Communist Parties in the runup to the European elections: Communist Party of the Netherlands (6 Feb. 1979), (West) German Communist Party (DKP) (6 Mar. 1979), Communist Party of Ireland (14 Mar. 1979), Communist Party of Luxemburg (27 Apr. 1979), and Communist Party of Belgium (23 Apr. 1979). (20) Gérard Streiff: ‘Marché Commun: Du Traité de Rome au projet d'élection de l'Assemblée Européene’, Cahiers du communisme, Apr. 1977, p. 77.

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Communist Internationalism Revisited (21) Jacques Denis, ‘Vingt propositions du PCF pour l'Europe’, Cahiers du communisme, May 1979, pp. 98–109. (22) The 20-point programme of the PCF (vide supra) was prefaced by a dramatic declaration which stated: ‘Comme en 1938 pour dénoncer la trahison de Munich, comme dans la Résistance à l'occupation nazie, comme en 1954 pour empêcher la création d'une armée Européenne sous commandement allemand et américain, le PCF se dresse résolument contre l'entreprise de régression sociale et de capitulation nationale. Il appelle au combat tous les travailleurs, tous les patriotes …’ See Cahiers du communisme, Jan. 1979, p. 114. (23) See Gérard Molina and Yves Vargas (eds.), Ouverture d'une discussion? (Paris: Maspéro, 1979), 31, 52, and 106. (24) e.g. the article by Jean Rony in Le Monde in early Mar. 1979, and the book written by Étienne Balibar, Guy Bois, Georges Labica, and Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, Ouvrons la fenêtre, camarades (Paris: Maspéro, 1979). (25) Paris: Seuil, 1974. (26) For further reference to these debates, especially the polemics between the PCF and the non-communist Left over Solzhenitsyn, see Jean Daniel, L'Ère des ruptures (Paris: Grasset, 1979). (27) See Irwin M. Wall, French Communism in the Era of Stalin (Westport: Greenwood, 1983), 203–19. (28) ‘L'Avenir commence maintenant’, 372. (29) Paris: Grasset, 1975. (30) See the review by François Hincker in L'Humanité, 7 May 1975. (31) Ellenstein, Histoire du phénomène stalinien, 248. (32) Adler, L'URSS et nous, 47. (33) Paris: Maspéro, 1976. (34) Ibid. 14. This trenchant introduction seriously undermined the claim put forward by Tony Judt, in his otherwise illuminating chapter on ‘French Marxism 1945–1975’, that Althusser was himself a Stalinist whose political and philosophical writings were the ‘pure product of the Stalinist theoretical mind, which has forgotten nothing and learned nothing from the last forty years of history’ (in Marxism and the French Left (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 235 n. 119).

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Communist Internationalism Revisited (35) A small sample of these works would include Dominique Desanti, Les Staliniens (Paris: Fayard, 1975); Paul Noirot, La Mémoire ouverte (Paris: Stock, 1976); Roger Pannequin, Les Années sans suite, 2 vols. (Paris: Sagittaire, 1976– 7); Pierre Daix, J'ai cru au matin (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1976); Simone Signoret, La Nostalgie n'est plus ce qu'elle était (Paris: Seuil, 1977); Janine Bouissounouse, La Nuit d'Autun (Paris: Callman-Lévy, 1977); Philippe Robrieux, Notre génération communiste (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1977); and Charles Tillon, On chantait rouge (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1977). (36) See L'Humanité, 13 Jan. 1977. (37) In 1982 party historian (and Central Committee member) Roger Martelli published the full text of Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956: Le Choc du XXème Congrès du PCUS (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1982). (38) See Ch. 7 n. 45. (39) Raymond Guyot, ‘Staline: L'Homme et l'histoire’, France-Nouvelle, 29 Dec. 1979–4 Jan–1980. (40) See Ch. 6. (41) Gérard Belloin, Nos rêves camarades: Infi(r)me(s) mémoires (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 13. (42) As Raymond Jean put it (in La Singularité d'être communiste (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 76): ‘un aspect immobile, assertif, déclaratif de la politique communiste, dont on trouve le reflet constant dans une rhétorique bien particulière’. (43) Hélène Parmelin, Libérez les communistes! (Paris: Stock-Opéra Mundi, 1979), 67. (44) A theme often broached by Louis Althusser in his articles in Le Monde in Apr. 1978. (45) ‘L'Avenir commence maintenant’, 373. (46) In Le Monde, 13 Apr. 1978. (47) See Molina and Vargas (eds.), Ouverture d'une discussion? 20, 25. (48) This theme was treated extensively in Ch. 6. (49) Belloin, Nos rêves camarades, 148. (50) Marchais, ‘Rapport au 23ème Congrès du PCF’, 64.

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Communist Internationalism Revisited (51) A version confirmed at the 24th party Congress in Feb. 1982, where Georges Marchais declared: ‘il nous a fallu vingt ans pour définir de manière concrète, à notre 22ème Congrès, un socialisme à la françhise … Vingt ans durant, nous sommes, peu ou prou, restés prisonniers d'un modèle de socialisme inadapté à notre pays …’ See Georges Marchais, ‘Rapport au 24ème Congrès du PCF’, Cahiers du communisme, Feb.–Mar. 1982, p. 20. (52) Louis Althusser, ‘On the Twenty-Second Congress of the French Communist Party’, New Left Review, 104 (July–Aug. 1977), 18. (53) The abandonment of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ did not figure in the preparatory document sent out for discussion to the rank and file; Georges Marchais simply announced that the PCF would drop the concept during a television programme shortly before the Congress. See Le Monde, 8 Jan. 1976. (54) See José P. Pereira, ‘A Case of Orthodoxy: The Communist Party of Portugal’, in M. Waller and M. Fennema (eds.), Communist Parties in Western Europe: Decline or Adaptation? (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 92. (55) In Le Monde, 25 Apr. 1978. (56) Reproduced in L'Humanité, 11 Dec. 1978. (57) Parmelin, Libérez les communistes!, 21. (58) Jean Bruhat, Il n'est jamais trap tard (Paris: Albin Michel, 1983), 218. (59) A different interpretation was provided by François Hincker, who combined the traditional intellectual criticism of the PCF's absence of political strategy after 1978 with the less common argument that the party's adaptation to social and intellectual change in France had been significantly greater under the leadership of Maurice Thorez and Waldeck Rochet than during the 1970s: ‘le rôle d'un parti d'avant-garde … est de prendre la responsabilité de lutter contre des traditions désormais inadaptés, et de promouvoir, à partir de la connaissance de la société qu'elles ont à travailler, d'autres conceptions et d'autres pratiques. Ce que pour l'essentiel fit la direction thorézienne en plusieurs circonstances capitales. Ce que fit la direction à partir de 1964, et ce sur quoi est progressivement revenue la direction actuelle.’ See Le Parti Communiste au carrefour, 43; emphasis added. (60) Pierre Grémion, ‘Le Rouge et le gris’, Commentaire, 24 (Winter 1983–4), 767. (61) See e.g. the article by René Andrieu protesting against the Soviet treatment of the mathematician Leonid Plyusch, in L'Humanité, 25 Oct. 1975.

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Communist Internationalism Revisited (62) As Jean Kanapa declared in his November 1977 speech at the École Centrale: ‘Nous considérons qu'il y a en URSS des insuffisances importantes au regard de l'exigence démocratique dont est porteur le socialisme.’ (Le Mouvement communiste international, 22). (63) As the authors of L'URSS et nous concluded, in a rather typical PCF understatement, the vast array of medals Brezhnev had awarded himself ‘ne relèvent pas son prestige aux yeux des masses populaires soviétiques’ (p. 206). (64) See her article against the views of Jean Ellenstein in Le Monde, 9 Apr. 1977. The themes presented were subsequently developed in her book Vers quels lendemains?(Paris: Hachette, 1979), in which she launched a general attack against the idea of ‘Eurocommunism’. (65) See e.g. Philippe Robrieux, Histoire intérieure du Parti Communiste Français, iii (Paris: Fayard, 1982), passim; and Jean Fabien (pseud.), La Guerre des camarades (Paris: Olivier Orban, 1985). (66) See e.g. his idyllic description of a Soviet labour camp during the Stalinist period, quoted in Georges Lavau, A quoi sert le Parti Communiste? (Paris: Fayard, 1981), 357–8. (67) André Wurmser, Fidèlement vôire (Paris: Grasset, 1979), 409. (68) Georges Cogniot died in Mar. 1978; Wurmser in Apr. 1984. (69) See L'Humanité, 11 Dec. 1978. (70) See ‘L'Avenir commence maintenant’, 372. (71) Lavau, A quoi sert le Parti Communiste Français ?, 411 n. 36. (72) Belloin, Nos rêves camarades, 173. (73) See ‘Sur l'Ouvrage Collectif “L'URSS et Nous”’, L'Humanité, 30 Aug. 1978. (74) Henri Fiszbin, Les Bouches s'ouvrent (Paris: Grasset, 1980), 77–8. (75) Nina and Jean Kehayan, Rue du Prolétaire Rouge (Paris: Seuil, 1978). (76) Declaration by Guy Hermier, in La Marseillaise, 21 Nov. 1978. (77) Kéhayan, Rue du Prolétaire Rouge, 12; emphasis added. (78) See L'Humanité, 11 Jan. 1980. (79) Adler et al, L'URSS et nous, 93. (80) Ibid. 119; emphasis added. Page 27 of 28

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Communist Internationalism Revisited (81) Georges Marchais, ‘Nous vivons le temps des révolutions’, in Les Intellectuels, la culture et la révolution (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1980), 24–5. (82) See the edition of 22 Feb. 1980. (83) See L'Hwnanité, 23 Jan. 1980. (84) Ibid. 22 Feb. 1980. (85) See Le Monde, 14 Nov. 1989. (86) M. Goldring and Y.Quilès, Sous le marteau, la plume (Paris: Mégrelis, 1982), 341. (87) See L'Humanité, 16 Jan. 1980. (88) See Le Monde, 8 Jan. 1980. (89) See Le Nouvel Observateur, 21–7 Jan. 1980. (90) Ibid. 10–16 July 1978. (91) Ibid. 20–6 Sept. 1980.

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s Sudhir Hazareesingh

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.003.0010

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the ramifications of the intellectual decline of French Communism. It explains the immediate consequences of the French Communist Party's (PCF) declining appeal to the French intellectual community in the 1980s and the resurgence of several factors contributing to the alienation of party intellectuals between 1978 and 1980. In addition to the internal conflict, the decline in the popularity of the PCF is attributed to the party's failure to capitalize on its opportunity to enhance its intellectual influence after the 1981 presidential election and the general decline of radical left-wing ideas, values, and assumptions since the 1960s. Keywords:   French Communism, intellectuals, left-wing, communism, French Communist Party

THE disaffiliation of French intellectuals from the PCF occurred in two stages. As shown in the Introduction, the later phase of this process during the 1980s coincided with the acceleration of the party's electoral and institutional decline. The immediate origins of the process of disaffiliation, which have been the principal focus of this book, may be traced to the internal crisis which developed in the PCF after the defeat of the Union de la Gauche in the legislative elections of March 1978. Initiated after the conclusion of the intra-party dispute in 1980, this drift from the organization rapidly turned into a wave of intellectual disaffiliation in the following years. This chapter will provide a more elaborate account of the ramifications of the intellectual decline of French Communism. First, the immediate consequences of the party's declining appeal to the French intellectual community in the 1980s Page 1 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s will be outlined. In this respect, it will be explained why the PCF failed to take advantage of its participation in the socialist experiment. Indeed, a new situation was created in French politics after May 1981, with the election of François Mitterrand to the presidency, and the subsequent formation of a left-wing government with Communist participation. In showing why the PCF failed to capitalize on this opportunity to enhance its intellectual appeal (or at least, to arrest its decline), the resurgence of several contributory factors to the alienation of party intellectuals between 1978 and 1980 will be noted. But it will also emerge that the question of the PCF's failure to renew its support in the French intellectual community in the 1980s cannot be treated from the perspective of the party alone. Identifying the origins of the PCF's intellectual isolation requires an (p.298) examination of the general decline of radical leftwing ideas, values, and assumptions since the 1960s. The effects of the intraparty dispute of 1978–80, from this point of view, constituted an important episode in a much broader process of intellectual realignment (and dealignment), the origins of which lay in the social and political upheavals of the late 1960s in France. This presentation of the immediate effects of the intra-party dispute in the context of the wider ideological evolution of the French Left will complete the account of the PCF's intellectual isolation in the 1980s.

Why Did the PCF's Spell in Government Not Make a Difference? Between the end of the intra-party dispute in 1980 and final confirmation of the demise of the PCF's appeal to French intellectuals by the middle of the decade, the party loyally participated in the socialist experiment initiated by the victory of François Mitterrand in the presidential elections of 1981. The presence of four Communist ministers in the Mauroy government symbolized the PCF's apparent commitment to the enterprise. Why did the party not avail itself of this golden (and entirely unexpected1) opportunity to enhance its support among intellectuals? There seemed, a priori, to be at least three good reasons why the PCF's presence in government should have had a positive impact upon its appeal to wider sections of French society. Firstly, the PCF was directly associated with a political experiment which, at least in its initial phase, raised high expectations in numerous sections of French society, including the intellectual community.2 The prospect of a new dawn in France seemed to (p.299) place the PCF in a promising position to capitalize on general aspirations for social and political change. Although the PCF was politically and institutionally weakened after the 1981 elections, the ideological framework within which the Mauroy government's key propositions were bound was heavily influenced by the Communist problematic. This was reflected in the package of economic measures announced by the Socialists after their accession to office, and the substance of the nationalization policies adopted in September Page 2 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s 1981. Both demonstrated that François Mitterrand's economic strategy initially rested on a set of assumptions about the role of the state, the expansion of the economy, and the promotion of redistributive measures which were essentially shared by Socialists and Communists alike. To this extent, the PCF could have echoed the claim made by Colonel de la Rocque after the victory of the Left in 1936: ‘Nos idées sont au pouvoir.’ Secondly, the party appeared to have reverted to a political strategy of left-wing unity, whose abandonment, as already noted, was one of the initial causes of intellectual revolt in the PCF after March 1978. More generally, historical experience had shown that the PCF had been particularly successful in attracting high levels of intellectual support during periods of political and programmatic alliance with the Socialist Party. The wave of intellectual affiliation to the party developed rapidly after the Socialists and Communists resolved to unite against Fascism after 1934. There was an equally considerable influx into the PCF after the signing of the Programme commun in 1972. Thus, the post-1981 entente between Socialists and Communists provided a potential source of intellectual renewal for the PCF. Finally, the party's presence in government could have provided an opportunity for the cultivation of intellectual support through influence and patronage. During its participation in post-Liberation governments after 1945, the PCF had not hesitated to use its power in this way to bolster its intellectual clientele, partly by appointing party members and sympathizers to government offices, and partly by using government resources to extend the party's political message across French society. More generally, the PCF was able, between 1945 and 1947, to use its prestige as a party of government to gather the support of a wide cross-section of the population, including la fine fleur de l'intelligentsia (p. 300) française. Thus, history also seemed to indicate that the party's previous association with governmental office was propitious to the expansion of intellectual affiliation to the organization. After 1981 the PCF appeared to be ideologically, politically, and strategically positioned to recapture at least some of the terrain lost since the conclusion of the intra-party dispute in 1980. Yet, by 1985, the party's support in the intellectual community had fallen to an even lower level. There were three essential reasons for this failure. Partial commitment, total weakness

The circumstances in which the PCF joined the Socialist government in 1981 were strikingly different from previous episodes in the adversarial partnership between Communists and Socialists. Both the Popular Front and the Programme commun were primarily Communist political constructs, devised by French Communist (and, in the former case, Komintern) strategists in the context of a wider vision of the PCF's growth and development. At the Liberation, Page 3 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s furthermore, the PCF was (by a considerable margin) the premier parti de France, and brought into government a strong sense of popular legitimacy. This was based in part, of course, on the PCF's heroic role in the Resistance, but also on its undeniably valid claim to be the representative of the popular will. In 1981 the situation was almost the reverse. The PCF's strategy of weakening the Socialist candidate had failed disastrously, and it was Mitterrand who clearly occupied the driving seat. Electorally, 1981 had been a disastrous year for French Communism: not only had the party lost more than half its seats in Parliament, but it had also failed to prevent the Socialists from gaining an absolute majority in the National Assembly. This considerably undercut the PCF's bargaining power in government. The PCF's position of weakness between 1981 and 1984 severely limited the party's margin of manœuvre in government. Communist officials recognized that the organization was in no position either to determine the fundamentals of government policy or to propose a viable alternative to the PCF's immediate strategy. After the municipal elections of 1983, for example, the further drubbing received by the PCF led to anguished internal calls for the party's withdrawal from government. L'Humanité editorialist (p.301) André Wurmser put his comrades firmly in their place, revealing, at the same time, the depth of his party's strategic impasse: ‘Nous avons choisi une fois pour toutes la voie de l'unité, pour mille raisons dont la première est qu'il n'en est point d'autre.’3 The party's weakness had three serious implications for the revival of its intellectual support. Firstly, the party's commitment to the socialist experiment appeared considerably less than fulsome. Cryptic declarations of party leaders showed that the PCF did not identify fully with the objectives of the Mauroy government. At the fête de l'Humanité in September 1981 Roland Leroy declared that ‘les communistes participent au gouvernement de la France. Ils ne sont pas pour autant parti du gouvernement.’4 This uncertainty was partly a function of the PCF's helplessness, which was nowhere more tellingly reflected than in its repeated failures to use its limited resources of patronage to any adequate effect. A few high-level posts in the administration were allocated to Communists. But the Socialists took effective steps to prevent the PCF from securing strongholds in strategic public sector areas. Thus, the Mauroy government never allowed the party to control a sector in which the Communist trade union, the Confédération Générale du Travail, was already strongly established. In the transport industry, for example, Minister Charles Fiterman demanded that a Communist should be appointed as head of the French railway network, the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer (SNCF). Given the strength of the CGT in the railway sector, such an appointment would have given the PCF a commanding position in the industry as a whole. Thus, the post was given to a collaborator of the Prime Minister. The Communists were offered (and duly accepted) the directorship of the Parisian local transport authority, the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP): Claude Quin, a party intellectual Page 4 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s who was a docteur ès sciences économiques, was nominated to this office. Appropriately enough, non-Communist trade unions were dominant in this sector of the transport industry.5 Furthermore, it is worth making the obvious point that a successful act of patronage in favour of an intellectual could not, (p.302) in any event, guarantee his political orthodoxy. Many Communist beneficiaries of the spoils system became increasingly critical of their party during the 1980s. The example of Daniel Karlin was not untypical. In 1982 he was appointed as a Communist ‘representative’ on the regulatory body for French broadcasting, the Haute Autorité.6 Two years later he sent an open letter to the party leadership criticizing the PCF's inadequate conception of intellectual activity.7 After the further electoral set-back suffered by the Communist Party in the 1986 legislative elections, Karlin was one of the organizers of a petition calling for an extraordinary Congress to discuss the party's future.8 In the face of such activism, Georges Marchais could have been forgiven for thinking magna est ingratitudo humana. Lastly, and perhaps most significantly, the PCF's half-hearted association with the socialist experiment resulted in the establishment of a clear line of demarcation between activities of the party and its support for the Mauroy government. The party counter-community was never intellectually involved in the problematic of ‘government’ after 1981. The PCF never refrained from taking full credit for the universally recognized competence and professionalism of its four government ministers, whose achievements were lavishly praised in the Communist press. But the party's intellectual networks were not invited seriously to evaluate the government's (or even the PCF's) approach to public policy issues, for example. As noted in the Introduction, the Institut de Recherches Marxistes showed few signs of real life after 1981. The party, in this sense, missed an opportunity to appeal to its intellectuals to become more involved in the process of social and political change in France. Thus, the counter-community experienced the PCF's participation in the Socialist government from the outside. This prevented party members from becoming too closely engaged with its activities, and cut off a potential source of intellectual revival for the PCF. A party whose habits had not changed

This rigorous separation of the PCF as a political organization from the ‘input’ side of the machinery of the French state meant (p.303) that the party could not, to all intents and purposes, rely on its association with the Socialist government after 1981 to enhance its appeal to the French intellectual community. If the party was to stem the tide of intellectual disaffiliation from French Communism, it could realistically have achieved this goal only by playing upon its intrinsic attractiveness to this social stratum. In order to be in a position to appeal to French intellectuals on this basis, however, the PCF had to be able Page 5 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s to claim that the reasons which had alienated most of the intellectual dissidents of 1978–9 were no longer valid. In other words, the PCF could bring the flock back only if the party leadership could effectively demonstrate that conditions in the fold had been altered beyond recognition. Had they? Between 1981 and 1984 there was no evidence of change in any of the major areas of contention which had alienated intellectuals from the party leadership during the intra-party dispute. The PCF remained an isolated and secretive political organization throughout this period, aggressively asserting its views to the outside world while continuing to conceal from its mass membership the profound divisions apparent in the leadership over a wide range of issues: the position of the General Secretary, obviously, but also more basic questions such as the evaluation of the party's decline,9 and the nature of its relations with the Soviet Union. The last place to find references to the existence of these cleavages in the party leadership was L'Humanité, which remained, under the watchful stewardship of Roland Leroy, an almost caricatural epitome of French Communist orthodoxy. The extent to which the basic policies and mores of French Communism remained essentially unaltered during the PCF's association with the Socialist government may be gauged in three ways, each of which underscored the continuing validity of the intellectuals' grievances in 1978–9. Firstly, party leaders remained visibly opposed to accepting any form of public or private criticism of the PCF's political line, even (and perhaps especially) if this opposition emanated from the highest levels of the party organization. After 1982 a number of cleavages emerged within (p.304) the upper reaches of the PCF over both the assessment of the party's recent past and the evaluation of its future political strategy. The details of these divisions need not be rehearsed at this stage:10 the essential point was the treatment of the individuals and groups who questioned the sagacity of the Marchais leadership's policies and practices. A rapid survey of internal developments between 1982 and 1985 provided little evidence of newly acquired toleration of internal dissent by the Marchais leadership. Whether in the Politburo (Pierre Juquin, Claude Poperen, and later Charles Fiterman), Central Committee (where an important challenge to the Marchais leadership was foiled in June 1984), or in party Federations (Meurtheet-Moselle, Doubs, Corse du Sud, and Haute-Vienne), the reaction of the leadership to any critical evaluation of the PCF's position remained entirely consistent with the earlier attitude towards the intra-party dissidents of 1978–9. Following the recipe which had been used to such telling effect after 1978, the Marchais leadership first ignored the critics (many of whom, it should be noted, were intellectuals), then distorted their views, isolated them from the rest of the organization, and then finally forced them out of positions of authority (and, in some cases, out of the party altogether). Plus ça change …

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s It might be objected that these cleavages were concealed from the public eye (at least until 1984), and, therefore, should not be considered relevant to an account of the sources of the PCF's continuing lack of appeal to the French intellectual community after 1981. But even if this point were to be conceded (which would rather overstate the case: there were, after all, reports on the PCF's internal divisions in the non-Communist press), it was equally clear that the PCF provided few tangible signs to the outside world that its policies and practices had changed since the late 1970s. One of the basic objectives of the intellectual dissidents was to introduce a measure of accountability in the PCF: in other words, to make the party leadership answerable to the mass membership for its policies in general, and its mistakes in particular. Was there any evidence of a movement in this direction on the part of the leadership after 1981? (p.305) Again, the answer could only be negative. Firstly, the most immediate sign that little was changing in the PCF was the continuing leadership of the party by Georges Marchais, whose public personality was, in itself, an important factor in dissuading French intellectual identification with the PCF in the 1980s. More important than the unchanging composition of the party leadership, however, was the manner in which the PCF publicly assessed the experience of the late 1970s, which had so decisively alienated intellectuals from the party. Not only did the leadership, as noted above, refuse to admit that the PCF was in decline after 1981: it also rejected any suggestion that it might have erred in its strategy at any moment in the recent past.11 The only logical solution to the problem of explaining what were euphemistically described as the PCF's ‘difficulties’ was to blame the dead. This expedient was eagerly seized upon by the Marchais leadership after 1981. Former party leader Maurice Thorez became the official scapegoat for the PCF's failure to adapt its political strategy to French social and political realities, whilst his successor Waldeck Rochet bore the brunt of responsibility for the nefarious consequences of the party's alliance with the Socialists. This conception of the retard of the PCF's political and strategic vision was, in effect, as far as the Marchais leadership went towards admitting that serious mistakes had been made.12 Thus, the PCF remained a highly secretive and undemocratic organization, whose leaders pointedly refused to accept any responsibility for the increasing problems faced by the party in the 1980s. Finally, in turning towards the PCF's conception of international politics, it may be asked whether the party had in any way modified its pro-Soviet strategic orientation, the adoption of which had caused such an outcry among party intellectuals in 1979–80. In assessing the party's approach to this question, a basic distinction has to be made between the PCF's stances in government and positions expressed by the party leadership and the Communist press. The four Communist ministers did not deviate from the ‘solidarité sans faille’13 with which the PCF had (p.306) promised to support all policies of the French state after 1981. On the other hand, while Page 7 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s publicly approving the direction of French external relations under François Mitterrand, the PCF leadership took pains to reaffirm the party's basic support for the domestic and international policies of socialist states. The imposition of martial law in Poland in December 1981, for example, was condemned in unambiguous terms by the French Prime Minister, and the government's position was unequivocally endorsed by Charles Fiterman.14 The PCF leadership, however, refused to condemn the suppression of the trade union Solidarity, and coverage of Polish events in the party press remained over-whelmingly favourable to the Jaruszelski regime.15 More generally, the party continued to emphasize its general support for the internal achievements of Soviet-style socialism, and constantly argued that any criticism of socialist countries in France was part of a conspiracy to discredit the political objectives of the PCF. Thus, party journalist Arnaud Spire, in an article in L'Humanité in 1982, stressed the need to dispel ‘les contes et légendes du méchant socialisme’, whose primary function was to ‘faire oublier le besoin qu'a notre pays d'un socialisme à la française’.16 Why the PCF was doomed: the realignments of the 1980s

In attempting to explain why the PCF failed to use its presence in government between 1981 and 1984 to regenerate its intellectual appeal, two conclusions have so far emerged. Firstly, because the party as a whole was divorced from the problematic of government, the PCF was not effectively in a position to exploit its participation in the socialist experiment to enhance its intellectual appeal. Secondly, because the party had not changed either its basic practices or the substance of its policies, it could not rely on its intrinsic attractiveness to cultivate intellectual support. (p.307) This would seem to imply that, if the party had been more wholehearted in its commitment to the government, and if the organization had undergone a thorough internal change after 1980, the PCF might have brought its own brebis égarées back into the fold, and also rekindled its appeal to the wider intellectual community in France. In this final section it will be argued that, even though these changes might have effected a revival of intellectual support for the party in the short run, they would not have provided a decisive impetus for a durable reconstruction of the PCF's intellectual base. The main reason for supporting this view resides in the nature of the intellectual evolution of the French Left, basically since the late 1960s, but more specifically in the years which followed the Left's accession to power in 1981. Why was this transformation of the Left's Weltanschauung relevant to the question of the PCF's intellectual appeal? The connection between these two phenomena will be readily understood if the underlying mechanism of the PCF's intellectual renewal during previous decades is explained. The party's loss of intellectual support in the 1980s was severe, quantitatively greater than at any moment in the PCF's history since 1945. That Page 8 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s said, the phenomenon of disaffiliation was not new in itself. None the less, as was shown in Chapter 4, the PCF had always been able to renew its appeal to the French intellectual community before the 1980s, despite the ebb and flow of its identification with French Communism. To understand how such a process of regeneration occurred across several generations, purely conjunctural explanations are not sufficient. Of course, the end of the Cold War, the initiation of de-Stalinization, and the signature of the Programme commun were important factors in rallying cohorts of intellectuals to the PCF. But why these events appealed to these individuals cannot be understood unless the core philosophical principles which underlay their attraction are identified. From this perspective, it is clear that the interpretative grid which enabled successive generations of French intellectuals to make sense of the political world was constructed under Communist specifications. There were three basic elements to this grid, which defined the philosophical principles of politics as well as their practical implications for action. Firstly, politics was about radical or revolutionary change: from Guy Mollet's socialist Utopia to Mitterrand's no proposals, most radical left-wing intellectuals identified with (p.308) political projects which promised a complete overhaul of existing social, economic, and political structures in France. Secondly, the sujet historique of politics was the working class: until the 1960s one could not be a left-wing intellectual without being committed to the devolution of political power to the French proletariat. Finally, to be a radical intellectual required a full-scale commitment to a certain form of political practice. As suggested in Chapter 1, this was epitomized by the Sartrian intellectuel engagé, who was restlessly devoted to political causes in a way which left little room for scepticism or self-questioning. As long as these principles continued to define the radical intellectual's conception of the polis, Communist and non-communist republican intellectuals could be described as evolving in the same political universe. When, accordingly, the PCF lost the support of a cohort of its intellectuals as a result of some specific occurrence (e.g. the imposition of Stalinist rule in Eastern Europe, Khrushchev's secret speech, or the invasion of Czechoslovakia), the party could eventually replace its losses from the wider community of radical republican intellectuals, who continued to empathize with the underlying principles of Communist discourse. The fact that these intellectuals inhabited the same political universe as the PCF did not, of course, guarantee that the party would find new intellectual converts after the departure of preceding cohorts. The party had to invest much time and energy into the regeneration of its support in the 1960s and 1970s, and the presence of a considerable intellectual substratum within the counter-community during the period of the Programme commun testified to the success of a conscious political strategy rather than a mechanically determined social movement across generations. The existence of

Page 9 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s these three convergent underlying principles, none the less, greatly facilitated the process of recruitment for the PCF. The decline of class as a structural determinant of political debate

The ultimate problem for the party, however, was that the intensity of the radical intellectuals' identification with these core values began to decline during the 1960s and 1970s, before vanishing altogether within a few years of the Left's accession to governmental office in 1981. As was shown in Chapter 5, the political centrality of the working class began to decline after the (p.309) 1960s as a result of a complex web of social and intellectual factors. From this point of view, the victory of the Socialists in 1981 was a potent symbol. The success of the cross-class appeal of the PS reflected a key transformation in the sociological vision of the French Left. More generally, the declining importance of the notion of class as a structural determinant of political debate on the Left was reflected in the emergence of political movements and ideologies which basically rejected the centrality of the notion of class. The burgeoning of active groups in such diverse areas as regionalism, gender, environmental action, and racial politics after 1968 illustrated the decline of the proletariat as a secular myth. The natural consequence of this change was to enhance the intellectual isolation of the PCF from the rest of the Left. The party could go some way towards accommodating these new social movements in France, but, in the final analysis, the French Communists lacked the ideological flexibility to incorporate new ideas into their political discourse. In the case of environmental protection, for example, the PCF could echo the bland admonitions of the major parties, but the Communists' support in industrial areas, and its general emphasis on material production and scientific control over Nature, were both practically and philosophically at odds with the deep ecologist rejection of the principles of industrial society. In other areas, such as regionalism, the party's efforts to accompany the changing winds were simply unconvincing. In the 1979 European elections, for instance, the PCF strove to present itself as the protector of ‘regional’ interests, in a rather transparent effort to capitalize upon fears of European integration among industrial and agricultural communities in the South of France. At a deeper level, the party could appear credible under this new mantle only if it was prepared to revise its traditional Jacobin conception of political, cultural, and administrative centralization. As the intra-party dispute of 1978–9 had demonstrated, the PCF leadership was loath to concede any ground to peripheral forces even within its own organization. There was little reason to assume that it was prepared to behave any differently with regional interests in French society more generally. It should be noted, in this context, that the postÉpinay Socialist Party proved to be considerably more successful in appealing to the imagination of these new social movements. The PS, whose ideology was Page 10 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s once (p.310) rightly described by Georges Marchais as a ‘fouillis doctrinal’,17 was not constrained by the need to preserve a coherent intellectual heritage in the first instance. The political and intellectual structure of the new party was also more receptive to changes in the ideological fabric of French society than the ponderous apparatus of the PCF. The PCF's failure to adapt to these ideological changes was, ultimately, a function of the intellectual worthlessness of the party leadership in the 1970s and 1980s. As early as 1976 (before his party had established its hegemony over the French Left), François Mitterrand delivered this crushingly accurate verdict on his political allies: ‘Ma grande chance historique, c'est l'incroyable médiocrité intellectuelle des dirigeants communistes. Regardez-les … Il n'y en a pas un pour racheter l'autre. On peut les manipuler comme on veut. Ils sont tous plus bêtes les uns que les autres’.18 The end of utopia: disillusioning consequences of radical change

The commitment of French intellectuals to radical schemes of social and political transformation, another central branch of the republican Left's common ideological trunk, also underwent a steady decline during the same period, before expiring totally in the wake of the Socialists' conversion to political moderation and economic realism by 1983. It is debatable whether the tremor of May 1968 provided the starting-point of this process. On the one hand, the student movements were consciously impelled by a Utopian vision which operated outside the traditional bounds of established political institutions and ideologies. To this extent, the soixante-huitards were simply adding to the Left's (already replete) armour of intellectual utopias. On the other hand, it is undeniable that the events of May 1968 fundamentally challenged the collectivist paradigms of the Left, and opened an ideological breach which subsequently encouraged and legitimized the principles of social, political, and ethical individualism19 on the Left. (p.311) The first frontal attack against the notion of radical change in the 1970s came from a group which had actively participated in the intellectual commotion of 1968. The nouveaux philosophes, who emerged in the wake of the debate on the nature of the Soviet system after 1974, popularized the view that revolutionary schemes in the twentieth century had brought only disaster and oppression to the populations they had sought to liberate. From the camps of the Kolyma to the horrors of Cambodia, progressive ideologies had provided the intellectual justification of totalitarian practices in every corner of the world. There was, from this point of view, a perceptible lag between radical intellectuals and their institutional representatives. By 1980 the former were already becoming sceptical about the political and moral value of sweeping schemes for social change.20 The parties of the Left, on the other hand, still appeared to cling tenaciously to the idea that political action should be directed towards a changement de société. By 1983 the Mauroy government had also Page 11 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s been converted to the sentiments of its intellectual followers. The Socialists, however, did not abandon the idea of radical change for moral reasons, but rather because they had tried to follow this route and had severely disrupted the French economy (and also, perhaps more pertinently, undermined their popularity). By the mid-1980s, therefore, most radical intellectuals no longer believed in utopian promises of a radiant future. Traditional forms of intellectual activity seemed to be threatened by new forms of intolerance and indifference. As Alain Finkielkraut stated: ‘la barbarie a done fini par s'emparer de la culture … La pensée cède doucement la place au face-à-face terrible et dérisoire du fanatique et du zombie.’21 This new state of historical gloom was summed up by Edgar Morin, a former Communist who still considered himself to be un homme de gauche:‘Je condamne l'euphorie. Du point de vue des probabilités, il faudrait être pessimiste, car tous les processus actuels conduisent aux régressions ou aux catastrophes’22 (p.312) The practical implications of pessimism

The combined effects of sociological pluralism and ideological pessimism produced a complete transformation in the radical intellectuals' praxiology. On the one hand, given the equal legitimacy which all new social movements could command on the Left, it was rather difficult to be committed to politics in the same way as in the 1940s and 1950s. If anything, the existence of a plurality of sujets historiques (in lieu of the monadic proletariat) constituted a potential source of confusion, against which the predominant intellectual response could only be a helpless lapse into relativism. But the tidal wave of pessimism which swept across the radical French intellectual community in the early and mid-1980s also decisively altered the Left's conception of the nature and value of political commitment. To be an intellectuel engagé in the pre-lapsarian era of historical optimism involved subscribing to an ideological conception of radical change, based on firmly held principles whose scope of application was considered to be universal. By the mid-1980s, however, this conception of political commitment was clearly agonizing. The intellectual changes which have been described in previous sections reflected a decline in the Left's belief in the intrinsic value of ideological schemes. The natural consequence of this transformation was a move towards a more pragmatic conception of politics, which, in itself, was a departure from the Left's traditionally chiliastic vision of the world. But the winds of change swept the intellectuals even further away from the classic paradigm of radical left-wing political activity. At one level, the content of the intellectuals' political actions changed. As the 1980s progressed, it was manifest that the issues which most concerned these intellectuals were moral and humanitarian questions: violations of human rights (expressed in the spectacular growth of organizations such as Amnesty International), international refugee problems (reflected in the Page 12 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s symbolic image of Sartre and Aron joining hands to help Vietnamese boatpeople, and, more generally, in the increasingly publicized role of associations such as Médecins sans Frontières), and the alleviation of poverty in France and in the world. At another level, which is of direct concern to the problematic of this book, radical left-wing (p.313) intellectuals also began to show signs of scepticism about the value of partisan identification. In the elections of 1986 and 1988, for example, the Socialists gathered an impressive collection of intellectual signatures (from both inside and outside France),23 but failed to generate the same level of collective enthusiasm as in 1981. A confident march towards oblivion

The broader ideological evolution of the Left in France since 1968 (which was accelerated by the impact of the socialist experiment in France after 1981) completely destroyed the core political values of the French intellectual community. The myth of radical change was exploded, the centrality of classbased political action rejected, and the intellectual's conception of partisan activity thoroughly reappraised. Returning to the counterfactual question posed at the beginning of this argument, it should be obvious why the PCF's prospects for reconstructing its intellectual base in the 1980s were extremely bleak. Even if the party had committed itself fully to the problematic of government after 1981, and had changed its internal policies and practices to accommodate criticisms expressed by its intellectuals in 1978–9, it was unlikely to bring French intellectuals back into the party fold, for the simple reason that many no longer subscribed to the core values of the republican Left. The changes in the utopian, sociological, and praxiological bases of intellectual commitment to political activity had effectively removed the non-communist Left from the ideological universe formerly inhabited by la grande famille de la gauche in its entirety. The French Communist Party, abandoned by its own followers and rejected by the broader intellectual community of the Left, was, therefore, fatally condemned to continue its confident march towards oblivion. In sum, the internal crisis within the PCF preceded the acceleration of the party's political and institutional decline during the 1980s. Yet, as has been argued, the dispute was also part of a broader process of social and intellectual realignment, the origins of which could be traced to the 1960s. (p.314) The object of this book was to identify the sources of the decline in intellectual affiliation to the PCF. It has been argued that the intra-party dispute of 1978–80 gave Communist intellectuals an initial impetus to reconsider the basis of their party membership, and this reassessment eventually resulted in a wave of disaffiliation. In an immediate sense, the intellectuals' departure from the party was a consequence of the failure of the Communist leadership to address their demands for internal reform, which included a more active Page 13 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s political role for intellectuals, a more democratic decision-making structure, greater scope for creative intellectual activity, and, finally, a more independent political strategy, based on a rejection of the PCF's traditional subordination to the strategic interests of the international communist movement. From a wider perspective, however, the decline in intellectual identification with the PCF should be seen in the context of the political and intellectual transformations outlined in previous sections. The process of disaffiliation was accelerated during the 1980s, and this both reflected and accentuated the general crisis of French Communism. The party's failing appeal to the French intellectual community was compounded by the ideological reorientation of radical left-wing intellectuals, who gradually rejected the core social and political values traditionally cherished by the republican Left. These short and middle-term factors reinforced the political isolation of the PCF during the 1980s, thus completing the party's alienation from the French intellectual community. Notes:

(1) If the dissident Communist (and former Politburo member) Pierre Juquin was to be believed, the PCF authorities expected François Mitterrand to lose the presidential elections of 1981. They also tried surreptitiously to undermine his campaign for the second ballot, despite officially calling on their electorate to support the Socialist candidate. Juquin's claims were made in an interview in Libération, 15 Jan. 1988, and were reproduced in Ronald Tiersky, ‘Declining Fortunes of the French Communist Party’, Problems of Communism, 37/5 (Sept.– Oct.) 1988. (2) See Diana Pinto, ‘The Left, the Intellectuals, and Culture’, in G. Ross, S. Hoffmann, and S. Malzacher, The Mitterrand Experiment (Oxford: Polity, 1987), 220–1. (3) Editorial in L'Humanité, 16 Mar. 1983; emphasis added. (4) Ibid. 14 Sept. 1981. (5) See Thierry Pfister, La Vie quotidienne à Matignon au temps de l'Union de la Gauche (Paris: Hachette, 1985), 156–7. (6) See Le Nouvel Observateur, 28 Aug.–3 Sept. 1982. (7) Part of this letter will be cited in the Conclusion of this book. (8) See ‘PCF: Pour le Vingt-Sixième Congrès’, Le Monde, 2 Apr. 1986. (9) The existence of which was not even officially recognized by the PCF in public before 1985. The Poperen Report, which treated this question at the Central Committee session of June 1984, was suppressed by the Marchais Page 14 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s leadership. See full text of the report (in the Appendix) in Michel Naudy, PCF: Le Suicide (Paris: Albin Michel, 1986). (10) For a graphic account of the rise of internal opposition to the party leadership in the 1980s, see Michel Cardoze, Nouveau voyage à l'intérieur du Parti Communiste Français (Paris: Fayard, 1986), esp. 117–40. (11) For a good example of this stream of self-justifications, see Georges Marchais's report to the twenty-fifth party Congress in Feb. 1985, in Cahiers du communisme, Mar.–Apr. 1985, esp. 27–34. (12) As noted in Ch. 8. (13) An expression used in the joint declaration of the Socialist and Communist parties after the legislative elections of June 1981. See L'Humanité, 24 June 1981. (14) See Le Monde, 13 Dec. 1981. (15) See e.g. the report from Poland in L'Humanité, 21 Dec. 1981, in which Solidarity activists were depicted as unscrupulous bullies, who were guilty of repeated acts of violence and intimidation against the Polish working class. In Sept. 1982 an article in Révolution explicitly condemned the military coup, and called for the re-establishment of ‘l'ensemble des droits et liberté constitutionels, y compris la liberté active syndicale’, but this was an exceptional (and inexplicable) deviation from the standard party line on Poland after 1981. (16) In L'Humanité, 21 Dec. 1982. (17) In E. Fajon, L'Union est un combat (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1975), 117. (18) Quoted in Franz-Olivier Giesbert, Le Président (Paris: Seuil, 1990), 27–8; emphasis added. (19) This interpretation was argued in Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, La Pensée 68 (Paris: Gallimard, 1985). (20) See e.g. the special issue of Esprit, 9–10 (Sept.–Oct. 1979), in which leftwing intellectuals discussed the failure of ‘des politiques qu'on croyait miraculeuses, et une raison qui prétendait dire l'avenir’. (21) Alain Finkielkraut, La Défaite de la pensée (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), 183. (22) Interview in Le Nouvel Observateur, 23–9 Nov. 1984, pp. 34–7; emphasis added. (23) See Jean-François Sirinelli, Intellectuels et passions françaises (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 318. Page 15 of 16

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The Changing Ideological Context of the 1980s

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Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism Sudhir Hazareesingh

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.003.0011

Abstract and Keywords This chapter concludes that the decline and collapse of the French Communist Party (PCF) may be traced back to the intra-party dispute of 1978–9. However, it acknowledges the limitations of using internal institutional dynamics to account for the source of intellectual alienation from the PCF. To address these limitations, it explores other possible explanations for the intellectual disaffiliation from the PCF, including the situation of the international communist movement and the significance of the communist intellectuals' experience. It does not rule out the possible re-emergence of the PCF, but should this happen it will have nothing to do with the Marxian vision that once dominated the French intellectual horizon. Keywords:   French Communist Party, intra-party conflict, intellectuals, communism, Marxian vision

IN a letter addressed to L'Humanité after the PCF's disastrous performance in the European elections of June 1984, two party intellectuals, Daniel Karlin and Tony Lainé, stated what had become obvious to most outside observers: the party was faced with the prospect of terminal decline, and nowhere was this more apparent than in the collapse of its intellectual support: ‘Subsistent encore quelques fidélités, mais surtout le regret et l'amertume, quand ce n'est pas la colère et la dépression. Si l'on s'en rapporte à ce que disait Gramsci des relations du PC avec les intellectuels de son pays, pour ce que nous en voyons, le Parti est en danger de mort’.1 In the years which followed this warning, the disintegration of what had once been the premier parti de France was accelerated. Most remaining party members publicly acknowledged that this tide could be stemmed only if the PCF radically reconsidered its political and Page 1 of 12

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Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism ideological conception of socialism, particularly in the light of the collapse of Leninist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989–90. The title of a book by the Communist philosopher (and Central Committee member) Lucien Sève, Communisme: Quel second souffle?,2 showed that the scale of the problems faced by French Communism was not ignored by all party officials. Yet, throughout the 1980s, most party apparatchiks continued to deny emphatically that the PCF was experiencing any form of ‘decline’. In his report to the Central Committee after the party's calamitous performance in the European elections of June 1989, Paul Laurent was faced with the delicate problem of explaining how an organization which was in pristine condition could lose almost fifty per cent of its electorate between the legislative elections of June 1988 and the European elections of June 1989. The answer was a model of dialectical subtlety. The results of the European elections had to be interpreted in the wider context of (p.316) the ‘mouvement politique de remontée de l'influence communiste qui a marqué et continue de marquer toutes les autres consultations électorates récentes’.3 In other words, the loss of 1,350,000 Communist voters between 1988 and 1989 was simply an irrelevant indicator. Il fallait y penser.

The Sources of the PCF's Agony It has been the principal argument of this book that the immediate source of the PCF's intellectual agony should be traced back to the intra-party dispute of 1978–9. The internal disaffiliation from the party was triggered by the uncompromising attitude adopted by party authorities towards the intellectuals' revisionist demands. The claims of the contestataires consisted, in an immediate sense, of two self-regarding demands: a desire for a more active political role in the party, and the provision of greater scope for autonomous intellectual activity in the organization. In addition to these claims, the rebellious activists made two demands of a more general nature: these pertained to the decision-making process in the party on the one hand, and its international political strategy on the other. After March 1978 the rebels sought to reform the authoritarian structures of the PCF by calling for a greater measure of accountability at all levels of the party machine. The primary purpose of this demand was precisely to prevent the adoption of a political strategy which was rejected by the overwhelming majority of PCF members, as was the case with the party's approach to the policy of left-wing unity, but also, more particularly, with its attitude towards the international communist movement. The spirit which underlay the advocacy of these distinct demands was initially marked by a dominant sense of optimism. The intellectuals did not hesitate to assert their claims for greater consideration in the party, and their positive attitude was reinforced by an indomitable belief in the justice of their cause. Ultimately, the optimism of the contestataires was reflected in their retention of three core values in the normative universe of French Communism: an abiding Page 2 of 12

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Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism faith in the moral and political virtues of the working class, a firm belief in the heuristic value of Marxist (p.317) theory, and, perhaps most significantly, an almost reverent sense of attachment to the ‘party’, a metaphysical entity which amounted to much more than the sum of its empirical parts. This confidence in the future (la moindre des choses, after all, for Marxist intellectuals with an eschatological philosophy of history) was rudely shattered by the overwhelmingly negative official response to their revisionist demands. By 1980 it had become clear that none of the intellectuals' demands would be met by the party authorities: hence the beginning of a steady process of disaffiliation, which was accelerated by the political and ideological consequences of the socialist experiment in France after 1981. By the mid-1980s the PCF was almost completely alienated from the French intellectual community. As indicated in the Introduction, the PCF implicitly recognized this state of affairs by abandoning all references to the traditional ‘alliance’ of the working class with intellectuals at its twenty-fifth Congress in February 1985. From this point of view, the events of the late 1980s in Central and Eastern Europe, coupled with the PCF's inadequate political response to the challenge posed by the demise of Leninism across the vieux continent, served only to drive an even greater wedge between Communist officialdom and the rest of French society.

Alternative Explanations? This work has focused primarily on organizational and strategic factors to explain the decline in intellectual affiliation to the PCF after 1980. More generally, it has been claimed that the endogenous dimension of intellectual activity inside the counter-community was of considerably greater significance in determining the process of disaffiliation than any external pressures which might have adversely influenced the nature of the intellectuals' attachment to their party. It might be objected that this focus on internal institutional dynamics provided an unnecessarily narrow account of the sources of intellectual alienation from the French Communist Party. It could be claimed that the approach adopted in this work, by concentrating on the social and political interactions of intellectuals in the counter-community, excessively undervalued the (p.318) possible implications of wider developments in French society for the problematic of this book. Before dealing with some issues which might be raised from these alternative perspectives, it will be useful to restate some of the basic methodological principles which underlay this study. Firstly, the subjects of this investigation were intellectuals whose defining characteristic was their membership of a specific political community. Therefore, it should be accepted that any account of these intellectuals' disaffiliation should have concentrated initially on developments within this immediate sphere of Page 3 of 12

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Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism interaction. This procedure seemed even more justified in the light of the relative intellectual isolation of the Communist counter-community from the rest of society. Secondly, it should be repeated that the object of this book was the explanation of intellectual disaffiliation from the French Communist Party. The claims put forward in the concluding chapters did not purport to account for the general decline in the intellectual appeal of communism in France during the 1980s. As shown in the Introduction, many intellectuals who left the PCF after 1980 retained their allegiance to communist ideology. Even less was this book an attempt to identify (let alone explain) the collapse of Marxism in France. Just as one could still be a Communist without being a member of the PCF, a continuing belief in the cogency of some elements of the Marxian critique of society was by no means predicated upon any specific form of partisan identification during the 1980s. Although it developed in a political, cultural, and intellectual context which had little in common with the French experience, the success of analytical Marxism in the Anglo-Saxon world provided a timely reminder that many contemporary interpretations of the doctrines of Marx and Engels could be intellectually appealing in spite (or perhaps because) of the absence of any accompanying conception of political practice. Thirdly, the argument has been based primarily on an intentional mode of explanation. The beliefs, practices, and responses of Communist intellectuals have occupied a central place in the narrative structure, and the process of disaffiliation from the PCF has been explained from the perspective of the principal actors. This methodological approach has relegated other factors (such as wider intellectual currents and social structures) to a contextual (p.319) position. It has been argued that these factors could not be treated as causal variables without doing violence to the explicit intentions of the subjects of this investigation. Of course, it could be objected that social explanation should not rely exclusively on the notion of intentionality. All things considered, however, the potential costs of alternative approaches appeared to outweigh possible benefits. As noted in Chapter 2, an excessively ‘idealist’ conception of the decline in intellectual identification with the PCF could always be vulnerable to the charge of abstracting the agents from their institutional setting. The pitfalls of following the structuralist route could be even greater. It would be particularly unfortunate, for example, to fall prey to the standard French practice of portraying individuals as the unconscious agents of (often imaginary) social structures. Exploring different avenues: the comparative communist perspective

None of what has been stated above amounts to a claim that the institutional approach favoured in this narrative could provide a general model for explaining the declining intellectual fortunes of the PCF, as well as Communist ideology more generally, in France after 1980. Rather, it has been suggested that the Page 4 of 12

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Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism specific object of this book would be best served by an approach which was centred upon the interactions of intellectuals in the counter-community. Nor will it be denied, of course, that there were interesting questions raised by the exodus of intellectuals from the PCF which were not addressed in this narrative. In this context, three areas of enquiry may briefly be mentioned. It would be legitimate to enquire whether the experiences of French Communist intellectuals in the 1970s and 1980s could be regarded as a specific illustration of more general developments in the international communist universe. Taking a synchronic view first, it is hard not to contrast the declining fortunes of the PCF with the relative stability of the intellectual appeal of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) during the same period.4 Upon closer examination, however, the basis for undertaking a significant (p.320) comparison appears rather slender. Indeed, the roots of intellectual affiliation to Italian Communism have little in common with the French case. Historically, the Soviet model was arguably less relevant as a source of intellectual affiliation to the PCI. Italian Communism, furthermore, was always much less of a working-class phenomenon than its French counterpart: in this sense, the proletarian myth could not serve the same inducting function as in the grand parti de la classe ouvrière. Finally, the PCI's rejection of the vanguardist dimension of party organization has meant that both the form and substance of the intellectuals' attachment to the Communist movement were significantly different from the French model. A more compelling comparison might be suggested. Many of the problems raised by the critics after 1978 could be seen as expressing tensions inherent in intellectual membership of Communist organizations. For example, one of the basic considerations underlying the démarche of the French Communist dissidents was the urgent need to make the party less opaque to the outside world. In one sense, this represented an admission of the PCF's intellectual isolation from the rest of society. As one of the intellectuals wondered despairingly: ‘Sommes-nous capables d'entendre une autre voix que la nôtre?’ At a more basic level, this represented an indictment of restrictions on the communication of information within the counter-community. Between 1978 and 1980 intellectuals constantly stressed the defective nature of internal provisions for exchanging ideas in the party. The party's organizational principles prevented horizontal communication between lower levels of the countercommunity; the Communist press remained basically closed to the heretics; the party leadership concealed essential information from the rest of the membership, and, perhaps more disturbingly, seemed to refuse even to hear (let alone consider) the opinions of those who disagreed with its views. Long before its popularization in the Soviet Union after 1985, the flag of ‘openness’ had been nailed to the mast of the intellectual dissidents of French Communism.

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Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism A diachronic method could be of equal value. This approach might also correct the unduly flattering suggestion, in the above paragraph, that there was a prophetic quality to the attitudes and beliefs of the internal critics. The dilemmas faced by the French Communist intellectuals were articulated in a specific political (p.321) context. As noted in Chapter 4, the crisis of 1978–80 was distinctive from a number of angles, not least the sheer number of intellectuals who publicly expressed their disagreements with the structure of the party organization and the content of PCF policy. However, the novelty of the ideas put forward by the French Communist intellectuals should not be overplayed. Radical schemes for party reform were as old as the communist movement itself. From this perspective, some of the themes raised after 1978 resounded as clear echoes of earlier disputes in the Russian social-democratic movement at the turn of the twentieth century. Thus, the intellectual critique of the ‘scientific’ pretensions of the PCF leadership was already explicit in Trotsky's scathing denunciation of the Leninist conception of zamestitelstvo, which justified the authority of a party leadership which had ‘substituted’ itself to the social class it claimed to represent.5 The theoretical dimension

The existence of this critical (and often reformist) tradition within the international communist movement invites a more fundamental question about the development of communism in France since 1920: the absence of a legitimate tradition of revisionist enquiry within the dominant strand of French Marxism. It was striking to note how cautious and diffident the intellectual critics of the PCF remained at the conceptual and ideological level throughout the crisis of 1978–80. Despite calling for a revision of internal party practices (the ‘scientific’ pretensions of the Communist authorities, and the Leninist conception of the vanguard), and implicitly challenging the social and political supremacy of the working class in the PCF, the rebels never appealed directly to a body of theoretical discourse in the Marxist tradition as a means of buttressing their demands for greater change. This ‘silence’ might be explained by conjunctural factors. The intellectuals may have couched their revisionist claims in concrete and practical terms as a means of pandering to the ouvriériste instincts of the PCF leadership. At the same time, many critics may have felt that simplicity and clarity of expression were (p.322) necessary prerequisites for retaining the attention of the mass membership of the party. Althusser's polemical writings during this period, for instance, demonstrated qualities of intellectual lucidity and stylistic coherence which were rarely displayed in his philosophical writings. In any case, Althusser's conceptual framework was ill-equipped to define the theoretical underpinnings of a revisionist approach, as his entire philosophical enterprise was geared towards preserving the (alleged) purity of Marxism from revisionist contamination.

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Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism A more ambitious explanation of the intellectuals' dilemma could be suggested. The critics arguably failed to articulate their grievances within a theoretical framework of revisionism because the dominant strand of Marxism in France had never accommodated such a tradition of enquiry in its midst. This is no place to rehearse the convoluted history of French Marxism since the 1880s: the basic features which are pertinent to this argument are well known.6 Marxist theory developed relatively late in France, and was always in competition with indigenous radical currents such as anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-communism, and Blanquism. The institutional hegemony of the PCF after the 1930s consecrated the intellectual triumph of a schematic and sectarian brand of Marxism which tolerated little by way of creative or critical thinking. Furthermore, as Tony Judt argues, this theoretical and institutional domination of the PCF forced non-communist Marxists into ‘restricting the categories worthy of consideration’.7 This theoretical strait-jacket compelled even non-Marxists on the Left to tailor their rhetoric to prevailing fashions. With the exception of a small and intellectually uninfluential current of ‘technocratic’ revisionism (symbolized by such figures as Pierre Mendès-France and Michel Rocard), non-Marxists on the Left remained theoretically committed to the goals of their Communist comrades until the mid-1980s. At the Metz Congress of the Socialist Party in 1979, for example, the following peroration was categorically delivered:8 ‘A Épinay, les socialistes ont fait un choix, celui de s'enraciner dans la lutte des classes. Sans stratégie (p.323) de rupture, le PS perdrait son identité. A quoi nous servirait-il de devenir une vague copie des éternels partis réformateurs, qui finissent toujours dans le lit de la classe dominante?’ The author of this rousing piece of rhetoric was François Mitterrand. The fact that the leader of the French Socialist Party still needed to express himself in such terms in order to anchor his political identity on the Left further illustrates the claims made in Chapter 9 concerning the common stock of political values shared by the entire French Left before the decisive realignments (and de-alignments) of the 1980s. But this language also illustrated the theoretical quandary faced by the reformer in France before 1980. The consequence of the absence of a legitimate revisionist tradition in French Marxism was that all attempts to question or redefine existing paradigms had to be made outside the framework of the dominant discourse. The Socialists would achieve this by invoking the practical imperatives of realpolitik after 1983. It is not clear how a similar result could have been obtained in the ranks of the PCF. In this sense, the rebellious Communist intellectuals were trapped. Had they tried to express their political misgivings in theoretical terms during the intraparty dispute, they would have been forced to rely on concepts and categories which would have marked them immediately with the stamp of heresy. As late as the mid-1960s, after all, undue emphasis on the importance of Gramsci in official Page 7 of 12

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Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism French Communist circles was a sufficient condition for public disgrace and even expulsion.9 Having elected not to articulate their questions in the framework of Marxist revisionism, however, the intellectuals foundered into incoherence. As noted in Chapters 5 and 6, a number of unresolved tensions remained in the critics' pronouncements on such questions as the status of the working class and the role of the vanguard.

The Significance of the Communist Intellectuals' Experience Ultimately, what was the significance of the experiences of the Communist intellectuals? This question could be asked in three (p.324) senses. Firstly, what social and political values (if any) did several generations of French intellectuals inherit in the course of their experiences in the Communist party? Secondly, did their attitudes in the 1970s and 1980s reveal anything about the wider political evolution of intellectuals in France? Finally, how representative were the Communist intellectuals of the norms and values of other social groups in the Communist counter-community during the same period? Thorough coverage of each of these issues would, of course, be entirely beyond the scope of these concluding remarks. The first question alone could provide a substantive object of further enquiry. Almost all the existing literature on Communist intellectuals has tended to concentrate on the dimensions which have been privileged in this narrative: the roots of affiliation, the management of political contradictions, and the ultimate causes of disaffiliation from the party. Once intellectuals departed from the PCF, however, they generally ceased to constitute a worthy subject of investigation. Yet a number of interesting questions could still be considered. From a subjective perspective, in what way did ex-Commmunists regard their past experiences? Following directly from this, what was the nature of their political attitudes towards their former party? Finally (the most difficult and controversial question of all), what social and political values did ex-Communists acquire during their experiences in the PCF and retain in their subsequent political and intellectual activities? These general questions need to be given a more precise formulation: answers could vary, depending on the particular generation of Communist intellectuals chosen, their location within the organizational structure of the party, and, of course, their reasons for resigning their membership. But it is particularly important to be wary of the inherent tendency of former Communist intellectuals to dismiss their past experiences in the party as aberrant. It should not be difficult to understand how such an ex post facto rationalization could be appealing from their own point of view. But ex-Communists were not alone in having a stake in propounding such an argument. The official party authorities were (and remain) committed to presenting former Communist intellectuals as deviants and renegades, who betrayed the working class to safeguard their material interests. Louis Aragon's representation (p.325) of former Communists as ‘flanchards’10 epitomized this official damnation of those who Page 8 of 12

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Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism abandoned the party fold. Even academic studies of Communist intellectuals often betrayed the same underlying prejudices. Jeannine Verdès-Leroux's detailed work on postwar generations of PCF intellectuals was admirable in a number of respects, but was marred by a persistent tendency to depict the experiences of former Communists in the darkest possible colours. Thus, the basic thesis of each of her studies was that membership of the PCF had a sterilizing effect on the output of party intellectuals: ‘les contributions des intellectuels communistes sont à peu près nulles sur le plan de l'art comme sur le plan de la connaissance philosophique, sociologique etc.’11 Despite approaching the problem from entirely different angles, these three conceptions were essentially united in regarding the Communist intellectuals' experiences in the counter-community in a totally negative light. This consensus was the accidental outcome of a common tendency to evaluate the careers of the former party members from a point of reference which was external to the subjective experiences of the intellectuals themselves. For the ex-Communist, this point of reference was his subsequent social and political Weltanschauung; for the PCF, it was the intellectual's departure from political orthodoxy; for Verdès-Leroux, it was the general cultural standards of French society. These standards of evaluation may well have served the different purposes for which they were intended. But they also helped to occult and distort the subjective meaning of the intellectuals' experiences during their membership of the PCF. Above all, this procedure resulted in emphasizing the discontinuities between the ex-Communist's past and present political (and socio-professional) identity. But this rupture should not be taken for granted. The PCF's sweeping condemnations notwithstanding, ex-Communist intellectuals were not traitors or renegades. Furthermore, in spite of Verdès-Leroux's categorical affirmations, party intellectuals could continue to be highly productive in their respective fields of endeavour: one has (p.326) only to cite the examples of Joliot-Curie, Aragon, Picasso, Éluard, and Althusser to make the obvious point that creative activity was never incompatible with membership of the Communist party. Finally, and despite former party members' inclination to burn what they had hitherto idolized, their political practices could remain informed by the Communist problematic long after they had ceased to be active in the countercommunity. It would be useful to bear this internalization of Communist values in mind when approaching the question of the political culture of post Leninist societies in Eastern Europe during the 1990s. Wider implications

From a synchronic perspective, could any wider meaning be attributed to the experiences of the Communist intellectuals in the 1970s and 1980s? It could be argued that, in the very act of rebelling against the official explanations provided by the PCF leadership after March 1978, the party intellectuals were rejecting a type of political discourse which would be found increasingly unacceptable by most of French society in the 1980s, including the Page 9 of 12

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Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism overwhelming majority of French intellectuals. Thus, the dissidents' disapproval of the PCF's normative discourse in 1978–9 anticipated the wider rejection of the Communist langue de bois during the following decade. Furthermore, in demanding a more positive political role for intellectuals in the PCF, the rebels were asking to be treated as full and active members of a political organization, rather than as purely symbolic and decorative figures whose primary function was to enhance the prestige of the PCF in the eyes of the French electorate. This refusal to be considered as mere ciphers was not specific to the Communist contestataires in 1978–9. As already noted in the Introduction, creative intellectuals in the fields of art, literature, and science also became increasingly reluctant to lend their prestige to the PCF in the 1980s. In a wider sense, it was also clear that the greater critical distance which creative Communist intellectuals sought to establish between themselves and their party mirrored the growing disenchantment of French intellectuals with the traditional canons of political radicalism. The most important sense in which the Communist intellectuals of the 1970s were representative, however, was in their public (p.327) articulation of many of the views and beliefs of the party mass membership. The public participants in the internal rebellion after 1978 viewed themselves as the standard-bearers of the Communist rank and file (including, of course, intellectuals at the lower levels of the party organization), and there was considerable evidence to suggest that their claims were not entirely unfounded. Thus, the contestataires' clamour for greater intra-party democracy was part of a more general expression of dissatisfaction of the peuple communiste with the authoritarian and hierarchical realities which were concealed under the PCF's official veneer of intra-party accountability. Thus, the sources of the intellectuals' dissatisfaction overlapped with many of the political criticisms of the rank and file. To this extent, the frustrated Communist intellectual was the mouthpiece of other social groups in the party counter-community. In sum, this book has argued that the declining appeal of French Communism should be explained primarily from the perspective of affiliation to the PCF on the basis of an aspiration to radical change and intellectual fulfilment, and the disillusion which set in when it became evident that the party leadership did not share these objectives. This strain of pessimism was compounded by the socialist experiment after 1981, which shattered radical illusions about the possibility (and desirability) of total change. By the late 1980s the collapse of Leninist regimes in Eastern Europe seemed to indicate that, if history had an ultimate purpose, it was not the one envisaged by the founding fathers of modern European communism.

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Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism In other words, intellectuals became disillusioned with radical politics during the 1980s because the assumptions on which their beliefs and actions were based proved to be entirely unfounded. The wave of historical pessimism which spread across the French intellectual community during the 1980s, engulfing not only Communist but also Socialist intellectuals, can be understood only if this nexus between basic aspirations and political outcomes is fully grasped. It is rather tempting, in the light of the collapse of Leninism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990, and the triumph of liberal democratic values (as well as the dynamic movement towards political and economic integration in Western Europe), to speculate that the decade of pessimism which has just lapsed could well be replaced by more positive and forward-looking (p.328) approaches in the broader intellectual community. French liberalism, after all, was not always the tempered, sceptical, and statecentric set of ideas and beliefs which were so well epitomized in the works of Raymond Aron.12 The domestic and international context of the 1990s might well provide the setting for a revival of the optimistic strand in French liberalism, which was embodied during the post-war decade in the practice of Jean Monnet and was an expression of doctrines which could be traced back to the first half of the nineteenth century. Only the future will tell whether this liberal phoenix will rise again from the ashes of the 1980s. However, it may be stated with some confidence that the new sense of optimism which may emerge will have little in common with the Marxian vision which dominated the French intellectual horizon for so long, and whose demise has been one of the underlying themes of this narrative. Notes:

(1) Daniel Karlin and Tony Lainé, letter dated 25 June 1984 (and not published by L' Humanité). See Le Nouvel Observateur, 13–19 July 1984. (2) Paris: Messidor-Éditions Sociales, 1990. (3) Paul Laurent, ‘Rapport au Comité Central’, Cahiers du communisme, Sept. 1989, p. 83; emphasis added. (4) See Gianfranco Pasquino, ‘Mid-Stream and under Stress: The Italian Communist Party’, in M. Waller and M. Fennema, Communist Parties in Western Europe: Decline or Adaptation? (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 37–9. (5) See Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879–1921 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 90. (6) See George Lichtheim, Marxism in Modern France (New York: Columbia, 1966). (7) Tony Judt, Marxism and the French Left (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 183. Page 11 of 12

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Conclusion: The Bounds of Optimism (8) See Jacques Kergoat, ‘Le Souvenir de Metz’, Le Monde, 1 Feb. 1990. (9) See Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman, Génération: Les Années de rêve(Paris: Seuil, 1987), 240–8. (10) In Les Communistes; quoted in Jean-Pierre Gaudard, Les Orphelins du PC (Paris: Belfond, 1986). (11) Jeannine Verdès-Leroux, Le Réveil des somnambules: Le Parti Communiste, les intellectuels, et la culture 1956–1985 (Paris: Fayard, 1987), 427; emphasis added. The same point is made in the first volume Au service du parti (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 16. (12) See, in particular, Aron's Mémoires: 50 ans de réflexion politique (Paris: Julliard, 1983), and Les Dernières Années du siècle (Paris: Commentaire Julliard, 1984).

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Appendix: Table of Main Events in French Communist Politics and International Communist Politics 1945–1989

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

(p.329) Appendix: Table of Main Events in French Communist Politics and International Communist Politics 1945–1989 1944 Sept. Communist ministers in de Gaulle's government. 1946 Nov. Communists win 28.6% of votes in legislative elections. PCF stands as the premier parti de France. 1947 May

PCF ministers sacked by Socialist Premier Paul Ramadier.

Sept. Founding meeting of the Kominform; general toughening of PCF line. 1948 Feb.

Prague coup; Communists seize power in Czechoslovakia.

June Yugoslavia expelled from Kominform; PCF expresses full approval. 1952 May

Violent clashes between PCF sympathizers and riot police during marches against presence of US General Ridgway; Jacques Duclos arrested.

1953 Mar. Death of Stalin. 1954 Nov. Beginning of nationalist insurrection in Algeria; PCF response ambivalent. 1956 Feb.

July.

20th Congress of Soviet Communist Party; Khrushchev denounces Stalin crimes. 14th Congress of PCF at Le Havre; Stalin's name acclaimed by delegates.

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Appendix: Table of Main Events in French Communist Politics and International Communist Politics 1945–1989 Nov. PCF approves Soviet intervention in Hungary; petition of intellectuals calls for extraordinary Congress. 1958 Sept. Referendum overwhelmingly endorses new constitution of Fifth Republic. Nov. PCF vote falls from 5.5 to 3.8 m. in legislative elections; only 10 deputies elected. 1959 June 15th Congress of PCF at Ivry; Thorez calls for agreement with Socialists. 1960 Sept. Petition of 121 left-wing intellectuals (including Communists) justifies military insubordination in Algeria. 1962 Nov. Limited agreements between PCF and SFIO in second ballot of legislative elections. 1964 May

July

17th Congress of PCF in Paris; Waldeck Rochet becomes General Secretary. Death of Maurice Thorez.

1965 Dec. United Left candidate Francois Mitterrand wins 45.5% of the vote in second ballot of presidential elections. 1966 Feb.

Article by Louis Aragon in L'Humanité condemns repression of Soviet dissidents.

Mar. Special session of Central Committee on ideological and cultural issues at Argenteuil; PCF stresses appeal to French intellectuals. 1968 May

Unrest in Paris; petition of 36 party intellectuals in Le Monde calls on PCF to show greater sympathy for students.

Aug. Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia condemned by PCF; party deeply divided over issue. 1969 June Presidential elections; PCF candidate Jacques Duclos wins 21.5% of the first ballot vote. World Conference of Communist Parties in Moscow; perceptible PCF realignment on Soviet positions. 1970 Feb.

19th Congress of PCF at Nanterre; philosopher Roger Garaudy expelled from party; Georges Marchais emerges as new leader.

1972 June Programme commun signed by PCF and Socialist Party. 1973 Dec. Publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's L'Archipel du Goulag in Paris.

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Appendix: Table of Main Events in French Communist Politics and International Communist Politics 1945–1989 1974 Jan.

PCF denounces ‘anti-Soviet’ campaign launched in the wake of Solzhenitsyn's work.

May

Franҫois Mitterrand, supported by the PCF, wins 49.3% of the second ballot vote in presidential elections.

Oct.

21st (Extraordinary) Congress of PCF at Vitry; hardening of PCF attitude towards the Socialists.

1975 Nov. Georges Marchais and Italian Communist leader Berlinguer suggest possible West European Communist axis (soon defined as ‘Eurocommunism’). Dec. PCF denounces existence of labour camps in the Soviet Union. 1976 Feb.

22nd Congress of PCF at Saint Ouen; apogee of Communist aggiornamento in France.

1977 Sept. Breakdown of negotiations on updating Programmen commun; disunity of Left publicized. 1978 Mar. Defeat of Left in legislative elections; PCF blames Socialist Party for result. Apr.

Beginnings of internal rebellion; petitions of critical intellectuals; articles by Althusser and Ellenstein in Le Monde.

May

‘Aix-en-Provence’ petition (1,500 signatures) published in Le Monde.

Sept. Official launching of L'URSS et nous Dec. Vitry meeting between PCF leadership and 400 party intellectuals. 1979 Jan.

Resignation of Henri Fiszbin as First Secretary of Paris Federation of PCF; beginning of ‘Paris affair’.

Apr.

23nd Congress of PCF at Saint Ouen; normalization of intellectual rebellion initiated.

June Central Committee decision to merge party research institutes; party journals France-Nouvelle and La Nouvelle Critique suppressed. Dec. Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. 1980 Jan.

Feb.

PCF gives unqualified endorsement to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. National Council of PCF at Bobigny on intellectual and cultural problems.

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Appendix: Table of Main Events in French Communist Politics and International Communist Politics 1945–1989 Oct.

Ellenstein expelled by his cell in Paris; dissidents gradually eliminated from counter-community.

Dec. Resignation of several leading Communist intellectuals after attack on immigrants' hostel instigated by PCF municipality at Vitry. 1981 Apr.

May

Georges Marchais clearly defeated by Mitterrand in first ballot of presidential elections. Franҫois Mitterrand elected to French presidency.

June PCF reduced to 44 seats after legislative elections; second Socialist government includes 4 Communist ministers. PCF expels founding members of dissident group Rencontres Communistes, led by Henri Fiszbin. Dec. Military coup by General Jaruszelski in Poland; Communist ministers condemn; PCF leadership blames Solidarity trade union. 1982 Feb.

24th PCF Congress at Saint Ouen; Maurice Thorez and Waldeck Rochet blamed for party's historical retard in adapting to social change in France.

1983 Mar. Left loses control of 31 large towns in municipal elections; PCF electoral and institutional decline confirmed. 1984 June Further electoral setback of PCF in European elections; 11% of the vote. July

New Socialist government under Laurent Fabius;Communists refuse to participate.

1985 Feb.

25th Congressof PCF at Île-Saint-Denis; reference to party's ‘alliance’ with intellectuals abandoned.

1987 Dec. 26th Congress of PCF at Île-Saint-Denis;former Communist ministers marginalized; reaffirmation of superiority of socialist social and economic systems. 1988 Apr.

May

Communist candidate André Lajoinie wins 2,056,000 votes in presidential elections; slight PCF recovery in ensuing legislative elections. François Mitterrand re-elected for second term as President.

1989 June European elections; Communist support falls to 1,371,000 votes. Aug. Tadeusz Mazowiecki becomes first non-Communist Prime Minister of socialist country since Cold War.

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Appendix: Table of Main Events in French Communist Politics and International Communist Politics 1945–1989 Nov. Opening of Berlin Wall; end of Communist dictatorship in East Germany; clear portents of end of Communist rule in many East European countries. (p.330) (p.331) (p.332)

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Select Bibliography

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

(p.333) Select Bibliography Bibliography references: ADERETH, MARTIN, The French Communist Party: A Critical History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984). ADLER, ALEXANDRE et al., L'URSS et nous (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1978). ALTHUSSER, LOUIS (with E. BALIBAR), Lire Le Capital (Paris: Maspéro, 1966). ——— Réponse à John Lewis (Paris: Maspéro, 1973). ——— Positions (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1976). ——— ‘On the Twenty-Second Congress of the French Communist Party’, New Left Review, 104 (July–Aug. 1977). ——— For Marx (London: Verso, 1977). ——— Ce qui ne peut plus durer dans le PC (Paris: Maspéro, 1978). ANDERSON, PERRY, Considerations on Western Marxism (London: Verso, 1979). ANDRIEU, RENÉ (with C. GAYMAN), Du bonheur et rien d'autre (Paris: Stock, 1975). ——— Lettre ouverte à ceux qui se réclament du socialisme (Paris: Albin Michel, 1978). ARON, RAYMOND, The Opium of the Intellectuals (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1957). ——— Mémoires: 50 ans de réflexion politique (Paris: Julliard, 1983). Page 1 of 21

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Select Bibliography ——— Les Dernières Années du siècle (Paris: Commentaire Julliard, 1984). ——— Histoire et politique 1905–1983 (Paris: Julliard, 1985). AVINERI, SHLOMO, ‘Marx and the Intellectuals’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 27/2 (Apr.–June 1967). AZÉMA, JEAN-PIERRE, and WINOCK, MICHEL, ‘Naissance et Mort’: La Troisième République 1870–1940 (Paris: Callman-Lévy, 1976). BABY, JEAN, Critique de base (Paris: Maspéro, 1960). BALIBAR, ÉTIENNE et al., Ouvrons la fenêtre, camarades (Paris: Maspéro, 1979). BARAK, MICHEL, Fractures au PCF (Aix-en-Provence: Karthala, 1980). (p.334) BARNIER, LUCIEV, J'ai quitté le parti pour Dieu (Paris: Fayard, 1978). BECKER, JEAV-JACQUES, Le Parti Communiste veut-il prendre le pouvoir? (Paris: Seuil, 1981). ——— Le Communisme (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1984). BELL, DAVID SCOTT, and CRIDDLE, BYRON, The French Socialist Party: The Emergence of a Party of Government, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). ——— and SHAW, ERIC (eds.), The Left in France: Towards the Socialist Republic (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1983). BELLANGER, CLAUDE et al., Histoire générale de la presse française, 5 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1969–76). BELLEVILLE, PIERRE, Une nouvelle classe ouvrière (Paris: Temps Modernes, 1963). BELLOIN, GÉRARD, Nos rêves camarades: Infi(r)me(s) mémoires (Paris: Seuil, 1979). BENDA, JULIEN, La Trahison des clercs (Paris: Grasset, 1927). BERLIN, ISAIAH, Russian Thinkers (New York: Penguin, 1978). BERNARD, PHILIPPE, La Fin d'un monde 1914–1929 (Paris: Seuil, 1975). BERSTEIN, SERGE, Histoire du Parti Radical, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1980, 1982). Page 2 of 21

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Select Bibliography BESANÇON, ALAIN, Les Origines intellectuelles du léninisme (Paris: CallmanLévy, 1977). BESNARD, PHILIPPE (ed.), The Sociological Domain: The Durkheimians and the Founding of French Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). BEST, GEOFFREY (ed.), The Permanent Revolution: The French Revolution and its Legacy (London: Fontana, 1988). BILLOUX, FRANÇOIS, Quand nous étions ministres (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1972). BIRNBAUM, PIERRE, Les Sommets de I'État (Paris: Seuil, 1977). BLEITRACH, DANIELLE, ‘Des changements à prendre en considération’, Cahiers du communisme, Feb. 1980. ——— Le Music-Hall des Âmes nobles: Essai sur les Intellectuels (Paris: Messidor, 1984). BODIN, LOUIS, Les Intellectuels (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964). BOGGS, CARL, The Impasse of European Communism (Colorado: Westview, 1982). BORDIGUEL, JEAN-LUC, Rapport au IIème Colloque de l'Association Internationale de la Fonction Publique (Bruxelles: Institut National des Sciences Administratives, 1988). (p.335) BOUILLOT, FRANÇOISE, and DEVESA, JEAN-MICHEL, Un parti peut en cacher un autre (Paris: Maspéro, 1979). BOUISSOUNOUSE, JANINE, La Nuit d'Autun (Paris: Callman-Lévy, 1977). BOURDIEU, PIERRE, Homo Academicus (Paris: Minuit, 1984). ——— La Noblesse d'État (Paris: Minuit, 1990). BOURRICAUD, FRANÇOIS, Le Bricolage idéologique: Essai sur les intellectuels et les passions démocratiques (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980). BRIÈRE, JACQUES, Vive la crise! Crise de la société, crise du PCF (Paris: Seuil, 1979). BRIGGS, ROBIN, Communities of Belief: Cultural and Social Tensions in Early Modern France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). BROCKLISS, LAURENCE, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Page 3 of 21

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Select Bibliography BRON, JEAN, Histoire du mouvement ouvrier français, 3 vols. (Paris: Éditions Ouvrières, 1968, 1970, 1974). BROWER, DANIEL, The New Jacobins: The French Communist Party and the Popular Front (New York: Cornell University Press, 1968). BRUHAT, JEAN, ‘L'Apport de Maurice Thorez à l'histoire’, Cahiers du communisme, Apr. 1950. ——— ‘Où est aujourd'hui l'homme nouveau?’, Le Monde diplomatique, Feb. 1982. ——— Il n'est jamais trop tard: Souvenirs (Paris: Albin Michel, 1983). BRYM, ROBERT, Intellectuals and Politics (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1980). BURBANK, JANE, Intelligentsia and Revolution: Russian Views of Bolshevism 1917–1922 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). BURLES, JEAN, Le Parti Communiste dans la société française (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1979). BUTON, PHILIPPE, ‘Les Effectifs du PCF 1920–1984’, Communisme, 7 (1985). CAMUS, ALBERT, Essais (Paris: Gallimard, 1965). CARDOZE, MICHEL, Nouveau voyage à l'intérieur du Parti Communiste Français (Paris: Fayard, 1986). CARILLO, SANTIAGO, L'Eurocommunisme et l'État (Paris: Flammarion, 1977). ——— Le Communisme malgré tout: Entretiens avec Lilly Marcou (Paris: PUF, 1984). CASANOVA, LAURENT, ‘Responsabilités de l'intellectuel communiste’, Cahiers du communisme, Apr. 1949. CAUTE, DAVID, Communism and the French Intellectuals (London: André Deutsch, 1964). (p.336) CAUTE, DAVID, The Fellow-Travellers 1917–1968, rev. edn. (London: Yale, 1988). CERETTI, GIULIO, A l'ombre des deux T (Paris: Julliard, 1973). CERNY, PHILIP, and SCHAIN, MARTIN (eds.), Socialism, the State, and Public Policy in France (London: Frances Pinter, 1985).

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Select Bibliography CÉSAIRE, AIMÉ, Lettre à Maurice Thorez (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1957). CHAMBAZ, JACQUES, ‘Les Communistes et les intellectuels’, Cahiers du communisme, June–July 1978. CHARLE, CHRISTOPHE, Naissance des ‘intellectuels’ 1880–1900 (Paris: Minuit, 1990). CHARLOT, JEAN, The Gaullist Phenomenon (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971). CHESNEAUX, JEAN, Le PCF, un art de vivre (Paris: Nadeau, 1980). CLAUDIN, FERNANDO, The Communist Movement from Comintern to Cominform (London: Penguin, 1975). —— L'Eurocommunisme (Paris: Maspéro, 1977). CODOU, ROGER, Le Cabochard: Mémoires d'un communiste 1925–1982 (Paris: Maspéro, 1983). COGNIOT, GEORGES, Parti pris, 2 vols. (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1977–8). COHEN, STEPHEN, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). COHEN-SOLAL, ANNIE, Sartre 1905–1980 (Paris: Gallimard, 1985). COHN-BENDIT, DANIEL, Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative (London: Penguin, 1969). Le Congrès de Tours (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1980), with contributions from J. Charles, J. Girault, J-L. Robert, D. Tartakowski, and C. Willard. Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency, 1984). COURTOIS, STÉPHANE, Le PCF dans la Guerre (Paris: Ramsay, 1980). DAIX, PIERRE, Aragon: Une vie à changer (Paris: Seuil, 1975). —— J'ai cru au matin (Paris: Laffont, 1976). —— La Crise du PCF (Paris: Seuil, 1978). DANIEL, JEAN, L'Ère des ruptures (Paris: Grasset, 1979). —— Les Religions d'un président: Regards sur les aventures du Mitterrandisme (Paris: Grasset, 1988).

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Select Bibliography DANIELS, ROBERT (ed.), A Documentary History of Communism (New York: Vintage, 1985). DEAK, ISTVAN, Weimar Germany's Left-Wing Intellectuals: A Political History of the Weltbühne and its Circle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). DEBRAY, RÉGIS, Lettre ouverte aux communistes français et à quelques autres (Paris: Seuil, 1978). (p.337) ——— Le Pouvoir intellectuel en France (Paris: Ramsay, 1979). ——— Le Scribe: Genèse du politique (Paris: Grasset, 1980). DEGRAS, JANE, The Communist International: Documents, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956–65). DENIS, JACQUES, ‘Sur l'eurocommunisme et les relations européennes’, Cahiers du communisme, Apr. 1978. ——— ‘Vingt propositions du PCF pour l'Eeurope’, Cahiers du communisme, May 1979. DESANTI, DOMINIQUE, Les Staliniens: Une expérience politique (Paris: Fayard, 1975). DEUTSCHER, ISAAC, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879–1921 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970). DUBIEF, HENRI, Le Syndicalisme révolutionnaire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1969). DUCLOS, JACQUES, Mémoires, 7 vols. (Paris: Fayard, 1968–73). DUHAMEL, OLIVIER, and WEBER, HENRI, Changer le PC? (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979). ELLENSTEIN, JEAN, Le PC (Paris: Grasset, 1976). ——— Ils vous trompent, camarades! (Paris: Belfond, 1981). ESTÈBE, JEAN, Les Ministres de la République (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1982). FABIEN, JEAN (pseud.), Kremlin—PCF: Conversations secrètes (Paris: Olivier Orban, 1984). ——— La Guerre des camarades (Paris: Olivier Orban, 1985). FAJON, ÉTIENNE, L'Union est un combat (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1975).

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Select Bibliography ——— Ma vie s'appelle liberté (Paris: Laffont, 1976). FANON, FRANZ, Les Damnés de la terre (Paris: Maspéro, 1961). FAUVET, JACQUES, Histoire du Parti Communiste Français (Paris: Fayard, 1977). FEJTO, FRANÇOIS, The French Communist Party and the Crisis of International Communism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1967). ——— Histoire des démocraties populaires, 2 vols. (Paris: Seuil, 1972). FEMIA, JOSEPH, Gramsci's Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). FERRAT, ANDRÉ, Histoire du PCF (Paris: Bibliothèque du Mouvement Ouvrier, 1931). FERRY, LUC, and RENAUT, ALAIN, La Pensée 68 (Paris: Gallimard, 1985). FILO DELLA TORRE, PAOLO et al., Eurocommunism: Myth or Reality? (London: Penguin, 1979). FINKIELKRAUT, ALAIN, La Défaite de la pensée (Paris: Gallimard, 1987). FISCHER, ERNST, Das Ende einer Illusion: Erinnerungen (Vienna: Wien & C., 1973). FISZBIN, HENRI, Les Bouches s'ouvrent: Une crise dans le PC (Paris: Grasset, 1980). (p.338) FISZBIN, HENRI, Appel à l'auto-subversion (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1984). ——— ‘Plus d'individualisme et pourtant plus de solidarité’, Nouvelle revue socialiste, 6 (Sept. 1989). FONTAINE, ANDRÉ, Histoire de la détente (Paris: Fayard, 1982). FRÉMONTIER, JACQUES, La Vie en bleu: Voyage en culture ouvrière (Paris: Fayard, 1980). FURET, FRANÇOIS, Penser la Révolution française (Paris: Gallimard, 1978). GAGNON, ALAIN (ed.), Intellectuals in Modern Democracies: Political Influence and Social Involvement (New York: Praeger, 1987). GARAUDY, ROGER, Le Grand Tournant du socialisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1969).

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Select Bibliography ——— Toute la vérité (Paris: Grasset, 1970). GAUCHER, ROLAND, Histoire secrète du PCF (Paris: Albin Michel, 1974). GAUDARD, JEAN-PIERRE, Les Orphelins du PC (Paris: Belfond, 1986). GEERLANDT, ROBERT, Garaudy et Althusser: Le Débat sur l'humanisme dans le Parti Communiste Français et son enjeu (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1978). GELLA, ALEKSANDER, ‘The Life and Death of the Polish Intelligentsia’, Slavic Review, 30/1 (1971). ——— The Intelligentsia and the Intellectuals: Theory, Method, and Case Study (London: Sage, 1976). GIESBERT, FRANZ-OLIVIER, Le Président (Paris: Seuil, 1990). GIRARDET, RAOUL, and ASSOULINE, PIERRE, Singulièrement libre: Entretiens (Paris: Perrin, 1990). GIRAULT, JACQUES, Benoît Frachon: Syndicaliste et communiste (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989). GLUCKSMANN, ANDRÉ, Les Maîtres Penseurs (Paris: Grasset, 1977). GOLDRING, MAURICE, L'Accident: Un intellectuel communiste dans le débat du printemps 1978 (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1978). ——— and QUILÈS, YVONNE, Sous le marteau, la plume (Paris: Mégrelis, 1982). GORZ, ANDRÉ, Stratégie ouvrière et néo-capitalisme (Paris: Seuil, 1964). ——— Farewell to the Working-Class (London: Pluto, 1982). GRAMSCI, ANTONIO, The Modern Prince and Other Writings (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1957). GREILSAMER, LAURENT, Hubert Beuve-Méry (Paris: Fayard, 1990). GRÉMION, PIERRE, ‘Le Rouge et le gris’, Commentaire, 24 (Winter 1983–4). GUYOT, RAYMOND, ‘Staline: L'Homme et l'histoire’, France-Nouvelle, 29 Dec. 1979–4 Jan. 1980. HAMON, HERVÉ, and ROTMAN, PATRICK, Les Intellocrates: Expédition en haute intelligentsia (Paris: Ramsay, 1981). ——— Génération: Les Années de rêve (Paris: Seuil, 1987). Page 8 of 21

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Select Bibliography (p.339) ——— Génération: Les Années de poudre (Paris: Seuil, 1988). HARDING, NEIL, Lenin's Political Thought: Theory and Practice in the Democratic and Socialist Revolutions (London: Macmillan, 1983). HARRIS, ANDRÉ, and DE SÉDOUY, ALAIN, Voyage à l'intérieur du Parti Communiste (Paris: Seuil, 1974). HAYWARD, JACK, ‘The Official Social Philosophy of the French Third Republic: Léon Bourgeois and Solidarism’, International Review of Social History, 6 (1961). HAZAREESINGH, SUDHIR, ‘Relations between the PCF and the Soviet Union under Waldeck Rochet’; M. Phil, thesis, (Oxford, 1986). HINCKER, FRANÇOIS, Le Parti Communiste au carrefour: Essai sur quinze ans de son histoire 1965 – 1981 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1981). ——— ‘Le Groupe dirigeant du PCF’, Communisme, 10 (1986). ——— ‘Le PCF divorce de la société’, Communisme, 11–12 (1986). HIRSCH, ARTHUR, The French Left: A History and Overview (Montreal: Black Rose, 1982). History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing, 1939). HOSKING, GEOFFREY, The Awakening of the Soviet Union (London: Heinemann, 1990). HUMBERT-DROZ, JULES, De Lénine à Staline: Dix ans au service de l'Internationale Communiste 1921–1931, (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1971). HURTIN, JEAN, ‘Trois manifestes pour l'intellectuel et ses devoirs’, Le Magazine littéraire, 248 (Dec. 1987). Institut Maurice Thorez, La Fondation du PCF et la pénétration des idées léninistes en France (Colloque) (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1971). Les Intellectuels, la culture, et la révolution (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1980). JACKSON, JULIAN, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy 1934– 1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). JEAMBAR, DENIS, Le Parti Communiste dans la maison (Paris: Callman-Lévy, 1984). JEAN, RAYMOND, La Singularité d'être communiste (Paris: Seuil, 1979). Page 9 of 21

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Select Bibliography ——— ‘Trajet politique et romanesque’, Le Magazine littéraire, 166 (Nov. 1980). JENSON, JANE, and ROSS, GEORGE, The View from Inside: A French Communist Cell in Crisis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). JOBERT, BRUNO, and MULLER, PIERRE, L'État en action: Folitiques publiques et corporatismes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1987). JOHNSON, RICHARD, The French Communist Party versus the Students (New Haven: Yale University, 1972). ——— The Long March of the French Left (London Macmillan, 1981). (p.340) JOLL, JAMES, Europe since 1870: An International History (London: Pelican, 1976). JUDT, TONY, Marxism and the French Left (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). JUQUIN, PIERRE, Autocritiques (Paris: Grasset, 1985). KAGARLITSKY, BORIS, The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State (London: Verso, 1989). KANAPA, JEAN, Coexistence pacifique et lutte de classes en 1975 (Paris: PCF, 1975) ——— Le Mouvement communiste international hier et aujourd'hui (Paris: PCF, 1977). KÉHAYAN, NINA, and KÉHAYAN, JEAN, Rue du Prolétaire Rouge (Paris: Seuil, 1978). KELLY, MICHAEL, Modern French Marxism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982). KOESTLER, ARTHUR et al., The God that Failed: Six Studies in Communism (London: Hamilton, 1950). KOLAKOWSKI, LESZEK, ‘Intellectuals against Intellect’, Daedalus, Summer 1972. ——— Main Currents of Marxism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). KONRAD, GEORGES, and SZELENYI, IVAN, La Marche au pouvoir des intellectuels (Paris: Seuil, 1979). KRIEGEL, ANNIE, Aux origines du communisme français, 2 vols. (Paris: Mouton, 1964).

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Select Bibliography ——— Le Congrès de Tours (Paris: Julliard, 1964). ——— Les Communistes français (Paris: Seuil, 1968). ——— Le Pain et les roses (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968). ——— Les Grands Procès dans les systèmes communistes (Paris: Gallimard, 1972). ——— Communismes au miroir français (Paris: Gallimard, 1974). ——— Un autre communisme? (Paris: Hachette, 1977). ——— Le Communisme au jour le jour (Paris: Hachette, 1979). ——— Le Système communiste mondial (Paris: PUF, 1984). LANE, DAVID, The End of Social Inequality? Class, Status, and Power under State Socialism (London: Allen Unwin, 1982). LAQUEUR, WALTER, ‘The Role of the Intelligentsia in the Weimar Republic’, Social Research, 39 (1972). LARKIN, MAURICE, France since the Popular Front (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). LAURENS, ANDRÉ, and PFISTER, THIERRY, Les Nouveaux Communistes (Paris: Stock, 1973). LAURENT, PAUL, Le PCF comme il est (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1978). ——— ‘Rapport au Comité Central’, Cahiers du communisme, Sept. 1989. (p.341) LAVAU, GEORGES, A quoi sert le Parti Communiste Français? (Paris: Fayard, 1981). LAZITCH, BRANKO, Le Rapport Krouchtchev et son histoire (Paris: Seuil, 1976). LECŒUR, AUGUSTE, Le PCF: Continuité dans le changement (Paris: Laffont, 1977). ——— La Stratégie du mensonge: Du Kremlin à Georges Marchais (Paris: Ramsay, 1980). LECOURT, DOMINIQUE, Lyssenko: Histoire réelle d'une science prolétarienne (Paris: Maspéro, 1976). LEDUC, VICTOR, Les Tribulations d'un idéologue (Paris: Syros, 1985). LEFEBVRE, HENRI, La Révolution urbaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1970). Page 11 of 21

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Select Bibliography LEFRANC, GEORGES, Jaurés et le socialisme des intellectuels (Paris: Montaigne, 1968). —— Les Gauches en France 1789–1972 (Paris: Payot, 1973). LE GOFF, JACQUES, Les Intellectuels au moyen âge (Paris: Seuil, 1985). LENIN, VLADIMIR I., What is to be Done? (Peking: People's Publishing, 1975). LE ROY LADURIE, EMMANUEL, Paris-Montpellier: PC-PSU 1945–1963 (Paris: Gallimard, 1982). LÉVY, BERNARD-HENRI, La Barbarie à visage humain (Paris: Grasset, 1977). ——— Éloge des intellectuels (Paris: Grasset, 1987). LEWIN, MOSHE, The Gorbachev Phenomenon: A Historical Interpretation (California: Radius, 1988). LICHTHEIM, GEORGE, Marxism in Modern France (New York: Columbia, 1966). LIDTKE, VERNON, The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labour in Imperial Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). LIGOU, DANIEL, Histoire du socialisme en France 1871–1961 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962). LINDENBERG, DANIEL, ‘Y a-t-il encore des intellectuels de gauche?’, Le Magazine littéraire, 248 (Dec. 1987). LONDON, ARTHUR, L'Aveu (Paris: Hachette, 1977). LUKACS, GEORG, History and Class-Consciousness (London: Merlin, 1971). MACHIN, HOWARD (ed.), National Communism in Western Europe (London: Methuen, 1983). MALLET, SERGE, La Nouvelle Classe ouvrière (Paris: Seuil, 1963). MANDEL, ERNEST, From Stalinism to Eurocommunism (London: Verso, 1978). MANDROU, ROBERT, Des humanistes aux hommes de science (Paris: Seuil, 1973). (p.342) MANENT, PIERRE, Histoire intellectuelle du libéralisme: Dix leçons (Paris: Callman-Lévy, 1987). MANNHEIM, KARL, Ideology and Utopia (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trubner, 1936). Page 12 of 21

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Select Bibliography MARCHAIS, GEORGES, ‘Rapport au 18ème Congrès du PCF’, Cahiers du communisme, Feb.–Mar. 1967. ——— Le Changement avec vous: Le Parti Communiste Français s'addresse aux intellectuels (Paris: PCF, 1977). ——— ‘Rapport au 23ème Congrès du PCF’, Cahiers du communisme, June–July 1979. ——— ‘Rapport au 24ème Congrès du PCF’, Cahiers du communisme, Feb.–Mar. 1982. ——— ‘Rapport au 25ème Congrès du PCF’, Cahiers du communisme, Mar.–Apr. 1985. MARCOU, LILLY, Le Kominform: Le Communisme de guerre froide (Paris: PFNSP, 1977). ——— L'Internationale après Staline (Paris: Grasset, 1979). ——— Le Mouvement communiste international depuis 1945 (Paris: PUF, 1980). ——— L'URSS vue de gauche (Paris: PUF, 1982). ——— and RIGLET, MARC, ‘Du passé font-ils table rase? La Conférence des Partis Communistes Européens’, Revue française de science politique, 6 (Dec. 1976). MARTELLI, ROGER, ‘Étudier l'histoire du PCF’, Cahiers du communisme, Oct. 1980. ——— 1956: Le Choc du XXème Congrès du PCUS (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1982). ——— Communisme français: Histoire sincère du PCF (Paris: Messidor, 1984). MARX, KARL, and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH, Collected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975, 1976). MAZEY, SONIA, and NEWMAN, MICHAEL, Mitterrand's France (London: Croom Helm, 1987). MEDVEDEV, ROY, Kruschev (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982). MEDVEDEV, ZHORES, Andropov (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983). MENDRAS, HENRI, La Seconde Révolution française 1965–1984 (Paris: Gallimard, 1988).

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Select Bibliography MÉNY, YVES (ed.), Idéologies, partis politiques, et groupes sociaux (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989). MER, JACQUELINE, Le Parti de Maurice Thorez ou le bonheur communiste français (Paris: Payot, 1977). MERLEAU-PONTY, MAURICE, Les Aventures de la dialectique (Paris: Gallimard, 1955). (p.343) MICHAUX, BERNARD, ‘Remarques sur l'idée de totalitarisme’, Cahiers du communisme, May 1978. MICHELAT, GUY, and SIMON, MICHEL, Classe, religion, et comportement politique (Paris: PFNSP et Éditions Sociales, 1977). MIDDLEMAS, KEITH, Power and the Party: The Changing Faces of Communism in Western Europe (London: Deutsch, 1980). MILOSZ, CZESŁAW, The Captive Mind (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1953). MILZA, PIERRE, Fascisme français: Passé et présent (Paris: Flammarion, 1987). MINC, ALAIN, La Machine égalitaire (Paris: Grasset, 1987). MITTERRAND, FRANÇOIS, Ma part de vérité (Paris: Fayard, 1969). ——— L'Abeille et l'architecte (Paris: Flammarion, 1978). MLYNAR, ZDENEK, Nightfrost in Prague: The End of Humane Socialism (London: Hurst, 1980). MOLINA, GÉRARD, and VARGAS, YVES, Dialogue a l'intérieur du Parti Communiste (Paris: Maspéro, 1978). ——— Ouverture dyune discussion? Dix interventions à la rencontre des 400 intellectuels de Vitry (Paris: Maspéro, 1979). MONNEROT, JULES, Sociologie du communisme: Échec d'une tentative religieuse au XXème siècle (Paris: Hallier, 1979). MONTALDO, JEAN, Les Finances du PCF (Paris: Albin Michel, 1977). ——— La France communiste: Un État dans un État (Paris: Albin Michel, 1977). ——— Les Secrets de la Banque Soviétique en France (Paris: Albin Michel, 1979). MORGAN, CLAUDE, Les Dons Quichottes et les autres (Paris: Roblot, 1979).

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Select Bibliography MORIN, EDGAR, Autocritique (Paris: Seuil, 1975). MORTIMER, EDWARD, The Rise of the French Communist Party 1920–1947 (London: Faber, 1984). NAUDY, MICHEL, PCF: Le Suicide (Paris: Albin Michel, 1986). NAVILLE, PIERRE, La Révolution et les intellectuels (Paris: Gallimard, 1975). NICOLET, CLAUDE, L'Idée républicaine en France (Paris: Gallimard, 1982). NIZAN, PAUL, Les Chiens de garde (Paris: Maspéro, 1976). NOIROT, PAUL, La Mémoire ouverte (Paris: Stock, 1976). NUGENT, NEIL, and LOWE, DAVID, The Left in France (London: Macmillan, 1982). ORY, PASCAL, ‘La Politique culturelle du premier gouvernement Blum’, Nouvelle revue socialiste, 10–11 (1975). ——— L'Entre-Deux-Mai: Histoire culturelle de la France, mai 1968–mai (p.344) 1981 (Paris: Seuil, 1983). ——— and Sirinelli, Jean-François, Les Intellectuels en France, de Vaffaire Dreyfus à nos jours (Paris: Armand Colin, 1986). PANNEQUIN, ROGER, Les Années sans suite, 2 vols. (Paris: Sagittaire, 1976–7). PARMELIN, HÉLÈNE, Libérez les communistes! (Paris: Stock-Opéra Mundi, 1979). PARODI, JEAN-LUC, and VIBERT, FRANÇOISE, Le Déclin du PC (1970–1985): Analyses secondaries des données de l'FOP (Paris, 1985). PARODI, MAURICE, L'Évolution de la société française depuis 1945 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1981). PCF, Le Parti Communiste, les intellectuels, et la nation (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1949). ——— Manifeste du Parti Communiste: Pour une democratie avançée, pourune France socialiste (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1969). ——— ‘Les Intellectuels, la culture, et l'avançée démocratique au socialisme’, Résolution du Conseil National du PCF, Cahiers du communisme, Mar. 1980.

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Select Bibliography ——— Le PCF: Étapes et problèmes 1920–1972 (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1981), with contributions from R. Bourderon, J. Buries, J. Girault, R. Martelli, J-L. Robert, J-P. Scot, D. Tartakowski, G. Willard, and S. Wolikow. PETOT, JEAN, ‘La Tradition Républicaine en France’, Jahrbuch des Öffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart, 38 (Tübingen, 1989). PFISTER, THIERRY, La Vie quotidienne à Matignon au temps de l'Union de la Gauche (Paris: Hachette, 1985). ——— La République des fonctionnaires (Paris: Albin Michel, 1988). PIERCE, ROY, Contemporary French Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966). PIPES, RICHARD (ed.), The Russian Intelligentsia (New York: Columbia, 1961). PISIER-KOUCHNER, EVELYNE, Les Interprétations du stalinisme (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1983). Programme commun de gouvernement (Paris: Èditions Sociales, 1972). PUDAL, BERNARD, ‘Le PCF: Aggiornamento communiste et reproduction du corps des dirigeants’, Politix: Travaux de science politique, 2 (Spring 1988). ——— Prendre parti: Pour une sociologie historique du PCF (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989). QUILÈS, YVONNE, and TORNIKIAN, JEAN, Sous le PC, les communistes (Paris: Seuil, 1980). RACINE, NICOLE, and BODIN, LOUIS, Le PCF pendant Ventre-deux-guerres (Paris: Armand Colin, 1972). RANGER, JEAN, ‘L'Èvolution du vote communiste en France depuis 1945’, (p. 345) in Le Communisme en France (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1969). ——— ‘Le Déclin du Parti Communiste François’, in Revue française de science politique 36/1, Feb.1986. REALE, EUGENIO, Avec Jacques Duclos au banc des accusés à la réunion constitutive du Kominform (Paris: Plon, 1958). RÉCANATI, JEAN, Un gentil stalinien (Paris: Mazarine, 1980). RÉMOND, RENÉ, ‘Les Intellectuels et la politique’, Revue française de science politique, Dec. 1959.

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Select Bibliography ——— La Droite en France, de la Première Restauration à la Vème République (Paris: Montaigne, 1968). REVEL, JEAN-FRANÇOIS, La Tentation totalitaire (Paris: Laffont, 1976). REYNAUD, JEAN-DANIEL, and GRAFMEYER, YVES (eds.), Français, qui êtes Vous? (Paris: La Documentation Française, 1981). RIDLEY, F. F., Revolutionary Syndicalism in France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). RIEBER, ANTON, Stalin and the French Communist Party 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia, 1962). ROBRIEUX, PHILIPPE, Maurice Thorez: Vie secrète et vie publique (Paris: Fayard, 1975). ——— Notre génération communiste (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1977). ——— Histoire intérieure du Parti Communiste, 4 vols. (Éditions Fayard, 1980– 4): i.1920–1945; ii. 1945–1972; iii. 1972–1982; iv. Biographies, Chronologies, Bibliographies. ROCHE, DANIEL, Les Républicans des lettres: Gens de culture et lumières au XVIIIème siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1988). ROCHET, WALDECK, ‘Le Marxisme et les chemins de l'avenir’, Cahiers du communisme, May–June 1966. ——— ‘Rapport au Comité Central’, Cahiers du communisme, Nov.–Dec. 1968. ——— Écrits politiques (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1976). RONY, JEAN, Trente ans de parti: Un communiste s'interroge (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1978). ROSANVALLON, PIERRE, L'Etat en France, de 1789 à nos jours (Paris: Seuil, 1990). ROSE, DAVID (ed.), Social Stratification and Economic Change (London: Hutchinson, 1988). ROSETTE, MARCEL, ‘Le Débat contre l'anti-communisme’, Le Monde, 10 Feb. 1990. ROSS, GEORGE, Workers and Communists in France: From Popular Front to Eurocommunism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

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Select Bibliography ——— HOFFMANN, STANLEY, and MALZACHER, SYLVIA, The Mitterrand Experiment (Oxford; Polity, 1987). ROSSI, ANDRÉ; (ANGELO TASCA), A Communist Party in Action (New (p.346) Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1955). ROY, CLAUDE, Somme toute (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). SAGNES, JEAN, ‘Parti Communiste et Parti Socialiste: Genèse d'une Terminologie’, Revue française de science politique, 32/4–5 (Aug.–Oct. 1982). SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL, ‘Les Communistes et la paix’, in Les Temps modernes, July 1952, Apr. 1954. ——— ‘Réponse à Albert Camus’, in Les Temps modernes, Aug. 1952. ——— Plaidoyer pour les intellectuels (Paris: Gallimard, 1972). SEMPRUN, JORGE, Autobiographie de Federico Sanchez (Paris: Seuil, 1977). ——— Quel beau dimanche! (Paris: Grasset, 1980). SÈVE, LUCIEN, Marxisme et théorie de la personalité (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1969). ——— Introduction à la philosophie marxiste (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1980). ——— Communisme, quel second souffle? (Paris: Messidor/Éditions Sociales, 1990). SHILS, EDWARD, The Intellectuals and the Towers and Other Essays (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1972). SHOSTAKOVICH, DMITRI, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (London: Faber, 1981). SHULMAN, MARSHALL, Stalin's Foreign Policy Re-Appraised (New York: Atheneum, 1963). SIGNORET, SIMONE, La Nostalgie n'est plus ce qu'elle était (Paris: Seuil, 1977). SILLS, DAVID (ed.), International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968). SILVERMAN, DEBORAH, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

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Select Bibliography SIRINELLI, JEAN-FRANÇOIS, ‘Effets d'âge et phénomènes de generation dans le milieu intellectuel français’, Cahiers de l'Institut d' Histoire du Temps Présent, 6 (Nov. 1987). ——— Génération intellectuelle: Khâgneux et normaliens dans l'entre-deuxguerres (Paris: Fayard, 1988). ——— Intellectuels et passions françaises: Manifestes et pétitions au XXème siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1990). SOFRES, Opinion publique 1986 (Paris: Gallimard, 1986). ——— L'État de l'opinion 1989 (Paris: Seuil, 1989). SOREL, GEORGES, Matériaux d'une théorie du prolétariat (Paris: Rivière, 1929). SPIRE, ANTOINE, Profession permanent (Paris: Seuil, 1980). STERNHELL, ZEEV, Maurice Barres et le nationalisme français (Paris: Armand Colin, 1972). (p.347) ——— La Droite révolutionnaire 1885–1914 (Paris: Seuil, 1978). ——— Ni gauche ni droite (Paris: Seuil, 1983). STIEFBOLD, ANETTE, The French Communist Party in Transition (New York: Praeger, 1977). STIL, ANDRÉ, L'Optimisme librement consenti (Paris: Stock, 1979). STREIFF, GÉRARD, ‘Marché Commun: Du Traité de Rome au projet D'élection de l'Assemblée Européenne’, Cahiers du communisme, Apr. 1977. SULEIMAN, EZRA, Les Hauts Fonctionnaires et la politique (Paris: Seuil, 1976). ——— Private Power and Centralization in France: The Notaires and the State (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987). TARTAKOWSKI, DANIELLE, Les Premiers Communistes français (Paris: PFNSP, 1980). ——— Une histoire du PCF (Paris: PUF, 1982). THOREZ, MAURICE, Fils du peuple (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1949). TIERSKY, RONALD, French Communism 1920–1972 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).

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Select Bibliography ——— Ordinary Stalinism: Democratic Centralism and the Question of Communist Political Development (Boston: Allen Unwin, 1985). ——— ‘Declining Fortunes of the French Communist Party’, in Problems of Communism, 37 (Sept.–Oct. 1988). TILLON, CHARLES, Un procès de Moscou à Paris (Paris: Seuil, 1971). ——— On chantait rouge (Paris: Laffont, 1977). TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE, Souvenirs (Paris: Gallimard, 1978). TOKES, RUDOLF, Eurocommunism and Détente (Oxford: M. Robertson, 1978). TOURAINE, ALAIN, Le Mouvement de mai ou le communisme utopique (Paris: Seuil, 1968). ——— Mouvements sociaux d'aujourd'bui: Acteurs et analystes (Paris: Éditions Ouvrières, 1982). ——— Le Retour de l'acteur (Paris: Fayard, 1984). VENTURI, FRANCO, Roots of Revolution (London: Weidenfeld, 1960). VERDÈS-LEROUX, JEANNINE, Au service du parti: Le PC, les intellectuels, et la culture 1944–1956 (Paris: Fayard, 1983). ——— Le Réveil des somnambules: Le PC, les intellectuels, et la culture 1956– 1985 (Paris: Fayard, 1987). VERMEERSCH, JEANETTE, Vers quels lendemains? (Paris: Hachette, 1979). VILLEFOSSE, LOUIS DE, L'Œuf dé Wyasma (Paris: Julliard, 1962). VOISIN, BRUNO, ‘La Presse communiste malade de la politique du parti’, PresseActualité, 162 (Mar. 1982). WALL, IRWIN, French Communism in the Era of Stalin (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1983). WALLER, MICHAEL, and FENNEMA, MEINDERT, Communist Parties in (p. 348) Western Europe: Decline or Adaptation? (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988). WALTER, GÉRARD, Histoire du Parti Communiste Français (Paris: Somogy, 1948). WARNKE, MARTIN, L'Artiste et la Cour: Aux origines de Vartiste moderne (Paris: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1990).

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Select Bibliography WEBER, EUGENE, ‘Un demi-siècle de glissement à droite’, International Review of Social History, 5 (1960). WEBER, MAX, Essays in Sociology, ed. Gerth and Mills (London: RKP, 1948). WEISZ, GEORGE, The Emergence of Modern Universities in France, 1863–1914 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983). WILLIAMS, PHILIP, and HARRISON, MARTIN, Politics and Society in de Gaulle's Republic (New York: Anchor, 1973). WINOCK, MICHEL, ‘Les Intellectuels dans le siècle’, Vingtième siècle: Revue d'histoire, 2 (Apr. 1984). ——— Nationalisme, fascisme, et anti-sémitisme en France (Paris: Seuil, 1990). WRIGHT, VINCENT, Le Conseil d'État sous le Second Empire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1972). WURMSER, ANDRÉ, Fidèlement vôtre: Soixante ans de vie politique et littéraire (Paris: Grasset, 1979). YANOWITCH, MICHAEL (ed.), The Social Structure of the USSR: Recent Soviet Studies (New York: Sharpe, 1986). ZELDIN, THEODORE, France 1845–1945: Ambition, Love, and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973). ZIEBURA, GILBERT, Léon Blum et le Parti Socialiste (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967).

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Index

Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and Decline Sudhir Hazareesingh

Print publication date: 1991 Print ISBN-13: 9780198278702 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.001.0001

(p.349) Index Académie Française 41 Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques 41 Action 259 Adler, Alexandre: disaffiliation from PCF 226–7, 235, 295 on Stalinism 276–7 Afghanistan: 1978 Communist revolution in 269 PCF approval of Soviet invasion of 13, 17, 118, 239, 247, 264–6, 268–70, 274, 292– 6 Alain (Émile Chartier): criticism of state power 33 relative detachment from politics 57 Algerian war (1954–62) army use of torture during 50 as catalyst of intellectual militancy 59, 175–6 Althusser, Louis: articles in Le Monde 148, 198, 198 n., 219 n., 219–21, 280 n., 283 Bell on 125–6 as critic of Soviet neo-Stalinism 277 and n. as crude reductionist 109 on definition of working class 173 n. and humanist Marxism 99–100, 212 and n. Kriegel on 130 marginalization of 156 n., 238, 255 and n. as neo-Stalinist philosopher 213 n. opposes abandonment of dictatorship of proletariat 283 packaged by nouveaux philosophes 223 symbol of PCF appeal to creative intellectuals 326 untypical lucidity of 322 Amin, Hafizullah 266 Page 1 of 25

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Index Amnesty International 312 anarchists, anarchism: Cohn-Bendit as German 180 n. opposition to state power 33 strength of movement in France 70 see also syndicalism Andrieu, René 288 n., 294 Angola, 1975 Cuban expedition into 269 Annales 211 anti-intellectualism: expressed by Marchais 186 and n. in the Marxist tradition 68–74, 134 in PCF during Cold War 149 n., 183–4 in PCF during late 1970s 187–8, 244 in PCF during 1920s 58 in Stalinist organizations 109 anti-racism 287 Aragon, Louis: bitter evaluation of career 118 n. condemnation of Soviet practices 172 n. declaration at Argenteuil meeting 213 Olympian conception of Communism 97 portrayal of ex-Communists 324–5 servile devotion to party 117–18 supports PCF list in 1979 elections 121 symbol of PCF appeal to creative intellectuals 326 Argenteuil meeting of PCF Central Committee (1966): and alliance with intellectuals 165 emphasis on creative activity at 75, 213 establishes limits of criticism of party policy 159, 214 Garaudy conflict with Althusser at 100 n., 212 and n. stress on historical research at 256 Army, French: decline as social institution 179 political role during Dreyfus Affair 45 (p.350) use of torture in Algeria 50 Aron, Raymond: and boat-people 312 and Communism 94 criticism of state power 33 definition of working class 172 distinction between forms of intellectual activity 23 as paradigm of French liberalism 328 scepticism of 56, 59 Astier de la Vigerie, Emmanuel d' 120 Aubret, Isabelle 121 Audran, Stéphane 5 Austrian social-democrats 73 Autant-Lara, Claude 9 n. Page 2 of 25

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Index Balibar, Étienne: alienation from PCF 238 criticism of internal party democracy 198 n., 219 n. denunciation of PCF chauvinism 274 n. as dissident Communist 233 resignation from PCF 136 support for IMT research 257 Barak, Michel: expulsion from PCF 243–4 on factionalism 201 n. on intellectual disaffiliation from PCF 295 on ouvriérisme 188 Barrès, Maurice: coins concept of intellectual 44 opposition to intellectual universalism 55 PCF adoption of discourse of 273 Bell, David 125–6, 128–9 Belleville, Pierre 173 Belloin, Gérard: criticism of PCF strategy 193 iconography of working class 191–2 on identity of Communist intellectuals 108 on ordinary Stalinism 279 on PCF's pursuit of happiness 222 on political contribution of party intellectuals 150, 169 on science of leadership 215, 281 on significance of party membership 154 work at France-Nouvelle 261 Benda, Julien 56–7 Berlin, Isaiah 20 Berlinguer, Enrico 186 Bert, Paul 45 Besse, Guy: definition of scientific socialism 216 as Director of CERM 252 as philosopher 255 Blanquism 322 Blum, Léon: impact of Dreyfus Affair on 46 and Popular Front government 32 and reformist tradition 134 n. and socialist political strategy 134 Bobigny meeting of PCF National Council (1980) 160, 247, 293 Bohringer, Richard 121 Bois, Guy 198 n., 219 n., 274 n. Bolsheviks 67 n., 71 Bolshevization: consequences for PCF 72, 133–4 instituted by Communist International 39 Page 3 of 25

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Index and sectarian political strategy 85 n. Bouches-du-Rhône Federation of PCF 291 Bouillot, Françoise 229 Bouissounouse, Janine 278 n. Bourquin, Martial 7 Braudel, Fernand 211 Brezhnev, Leonid 288 and n., 292 Brière, Jacques: criticism of PCF social analysis 193–4 critique of vanguardism 220–1 and reforms of party organization 203–4 tardy conversion to factionalism 208 work at France-Nouvelle 261 Briggs, Robin 26 Britain 49 Bruhat, Jean: on anti-intellectualism in PCF 183 collaboration with PCF press 118 as intellectual optimist 232–4 and PCF research institutes 258 n. as Stalinist historian 211 and n., 212, 256 n. Buci-Glucksmann, Christine: on PCF treatment of intellectuals 246 (p.351) on strategic inadequacy of PCF 280–1, 284 Bukharin, Nikolai 71 Burdeau, Auguste 45 Buries, Jean 256, 258 Cahiers du communisme 99, 117, 273 Cahiers d'histoire de l'lnstitut Maurice Thorez 256, 278 Cambodia 269, 311 Camus, Albert: conception of role of intellectual 57 criticism of state power 33 on justification of violence by Left 178 Sartre's friendship with 240 Capetian monarchy 28, 32–3 capitalism, capitalist 70, 94,97 devaluation of intellectual activity 76 dissidents' collusion with 246 Carter administration (1976–80) 121 Casanova, Laurent 75, 177 Castoriadis, Cornelius 173 n., 174 Catholicism, Catholic Church: anti-semitism of 50 and French higher education 30 Garaudy's conversion to 147 n. as guide to moral action 179 legacy to French culture 26 parallels with Communist Party 210 n. Page 4 of 25

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Index political role during Dreyfus Affair 45 Caute, David 82–3, 110 centre, politics of the 64 CERES (Centre d'Études, de Recherches, et d'Éducation Socialistes) 228 Ceretti, Giulio 210 n. CERM (Centre d'Études et de Recherches Marxistes) 99, 117, 259,264 denial of intellectual autonomy at 249–58 Césaire, Aimé 135 CGT (Confédération Générate du Travail) 8, 301 Chabrol, Claude 5 Chambaz, Jacques 77–8 Charles-Roux, Edmonde 9 Chartier, Émile, see Alain Clémençeau, Georges 46 Clément, Catherine 9 Cogniot, Georges: career in party machine 112 and n. pro-Soviet inclinations of 289 and n., 290 Cohen, Francis 295 Cohn-Bendit, Daniel 176 n., 180 n. Cold War 145, 161, 183, 212, 214, 251,260 generation of Communist intellectuals 93 n., 95–6, 137–9, 146, 165, 277, 307 ideological battles of 57, 174, 175 and Stalinist Marxism 50 Collegè de France 44 Comité du Rassemblement Populaire 31 Committee for the Fiftieth Anniversary of Victor Hugo 31 Communist historians: and Circle of Communist Historians 211 philosophical optimism of 232–4, 236 political quiescence at IMT 252–8 and treatment of Stalinism 276–7 Communist intellectuals: and attempts to revive union de la gauche 147, 160, 274 challenge to vanguardism 196–200 and concept of totalitarianism 221–5 conflict with French state 63, 101–2 contrasting sources of dissident activity 160–2 defeat of 1978 rebellion of 238–40 desire for autonomy frustrated 17, 241, 247–52, 316 disaffiliation from PCF 3, 17, 104, 164–7, 238–41, 252, 288, 294–6, 297, 314, 317– 19 dissident organizations in 1980s 6–8 diversity 102–3, 105–19, 243–249 and Eurocommunism 268, 273–4 and evaluation of Soviet experience 285–96 four ministers in Socialist government 7, 17, 182, 305–6 functionalist account of 87–94, 101 generations of 136–7, 306–8 Page 5 of 25

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Index growing pessimism of 15, 153–5, 166, 240, 327–8 (p.352) as guardians of French culture 15 idealized conception of working class 169–71, 180–94 Kriegel depiction of 129–32 lingering attachment to PCF 225–36 Mannheimian account of 81–6 Marchais as seen by 185–8, 206 political determinants of support for party 94–8, 101 and problem of factionalism 200–8 professional rivalry among 98–101 pro-Soviet attitudes among 145–6 purged from PCF leadership 8, 304 quest for greater openness 320 and question of Stalin 274–85 and scientific conception of politics 208–9, 215–21, 235, 250, 281, 321 self-assertion of 15, 16, 149–53, 168, 184, 194–5 social identity of 149–50 saurces of affiliation to PCF 14, 101–2 and tradition of intellectual militancy 50, 59, 63, 101–2, 308 wider significance of experiences of 323–7 Communist lnternational, First 66 Communist International, Third (Komintern): and Bolshevization 39 debate over membership of 274 foundation of 71, 72 n., 109 influence on PCF 132, 273, 278 influence on Popular Front 300 Second Congress of 200 Communist Manifesto (1848) 65, 216 Communist Party of Algeria 175 Communist Party of Belgium 272 n. Communist Party of Czechoslovakia 152 Communist Party of France (PCF): abandons socialist realism 15 administrative approach towards dissent 241–58 alliance with intellectuals 2, 3, 77, 165, 193, 317 anti-intellectualism in 58, 149 n., 183–4, 186, 136 n., 187–8, 244 Aron on, 94 attitude towards union de la gauche 137–8, 217–18, 268–9, 269 n., 280–1, 283, 284 bankruptcy of ideology of 18 Bolshevization of 72, 133–4 class-consciousness in 83 closure of les Lettres françaises 117 and common values of the Left 80 confident march towards oblivion 313 contradictory cultural identity of 73–4 decline in readership of publications 11 defends show trials in Eastern Europe 138 definition of intellectual activity 75–8, 105–6, 142 Page 6 of 25

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Index denial of existence of Khrushchev's secret speech 139, 275, 278 dismissive attitude towards dissidents 123–4, 143–4, 146, 155–60, 245–7 and election caampaign of 1978 193 electoral decline of 3, 4, 164, 300, 315–16 eleventh Congress (Strasburg, 1947) 76 failure to recognize significance of 1989–90 revolutions 12, 294, 315, 317, 327 and fellow-travellers 8–10, 119–22, 183, 230 fifteenth Congress (1959) 284 formation of 39, 48, 58, 70, 132 founding Congress (Tours, 1920) 274 fourteenth Congress (Le Havre, 1956) 99 n. 135 n. hostility to factional activity 200 and n., 241 ideological influence over Popular Front 32 influence of Leninism on 63, 72, 195, 202 n., 203 intellectual mediocrity of leadership 310 intensity of intellectual commitment to 153–5 isolation in French politics 2, 59, 143 Kriegel paradigm of 127–32 limited impact of spell in government (1981–4) 298–302 (p.353) nineteenth Congress (1970) 140 organizational principles of, see party organization patronage of intellectual activity 155–7, 301–2 perception of stability of 127–8, 131–2 permanents of 99, 108, 110–13, 153, 156, 163, 182, 204 n., 205–6, 239, 259, 261–2 policy towards immigrants 136 political culture of 63 positive evaluation of Soviet-type socialism 1, 162, 236, 274, 285–96 problem of estimating membership of 141–3 and problematic of the state 35 purges in party press 258–64 and question of Stalin 274–85 republican dimension of 31, 50, 59, 63, 101–2, 308 Sartre and 58, 174, 177, 196–7, 230 and scientific conception of politics 209–14, 214 n., 215 selflessness of militants 126–7, 189 sixteenth Congress (Île-St-Denis, 1961) 99 n. social values of mass membership 179–80 n. strategic alignment on Soviet Union 17, 138, 265–74, 292–6 twenty-fifth Congress (1985) 2, 3, 77, 165, 317 twenty-fourth Congress (1982) 143 n., 282 n. twenty-second Congress (1976) 179, 193, 260, 282 and n., 283, 284 twenty-sixth Congress (1987) 1, 7, 143 n. twenty-third Congress (1979) 131, 151, 199–200, 236–7, 242, 243, 245, 250 n., 269 n., 270, 275–6, 280, 281, 290 unchanged practices in 1980s 302–6 working-class identification with 171 and n., 192–3, 196–7 working-class political leadership of 63,73, 133–4, 170 Communist Party of Germany (DKP) 272 n. Communist Party of Greece 272 n. Page 7 of 25

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Index Communist Party of Ireland 272 n. Communist Party of Italy (PCI): Berlinguer as leader of 186 and Eurocommunism 267, 271–3 French Communist sympathies for 202 n. Gramscian influence on 68 at Moscow Conference (1969) 267 redefinition of political identity (1989–90) 12 roots of intellectual affiliation to 319–20 Communist Party of Japan 271 Communist Party of Luxemburg 272 n. Communist Party of Mexico 271 Communist Party of Netherlands 272 n. Communist Party of Portugal 272 n., 283 Communist Party of the Soviet Union: and Bolshevization 72 criticism of PCF strategy 2 and proletarian internationalism 267 resolution on artistic creation (1925) 71 ‘Short Course’ of (1938) 71 social origins of party members 142 tenth Congress (1921) 200 twentieth Congress (1956) 138, 146, 231, 275, 278 Communist Party of Spain (PCE) 109,151 cautious approach at Moscow Conference (1969) 267 and Eurocommunism 267, 271–3 ‘confusionnisme’ 72 Constant, Benjamin 33 Corse du Sud Federation of PCF 304 CVIA (Comité de Vigilance des Intellectuels Anti-Fascistes) 113 Czechoslovakia: Communist intellectuals' reaction to Soviet invasion of 138–40, 147, 161–2, 275, 308 execution of innocents in 178 PCF condemnation of events in 266–7 Daix, Pierre 278 n. Daladier, Édouard 46 Damette, Félix 8 Debray, Régis 223 (p.354) Decaillot, Maurice 293, 295 Decaux, Alain 9 Delerue, Georges 5 democratic centralism: dissidents' ambivalence towards reform of 201–20 intellectual critique of 195, 198–200, 244 Marchais definition of 198 as obstacle to intellectual activity 151–2 and PCF political culture 143 and science of politics 214–15 Page 8 of 25

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Index Denis, Jacques 273 Depardieu, Gérard 5 Desanti, Dominique 278 n. Désir, Jean-Claude (Harlem) 177 Desoblin 75 de-Stalinization 146,175 lukewarm PCF response to 161, 275 PCF generation of Communist intellectuals 137–40, 307 Destutt de Tracy, Antoine-Louis-Claude 27 Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung 66 Deutscher, Isaac 116 n. Devesa, Jean-Michel 229 dictatorship of the proletariat 283 Doubs Federation of the PCF 304 Doumeng, Jean-Baptiste 113 Dreyfus Affair: Aron on political implications of 56 Benda's view of 57 changes in intellectual occupations since 52 and emergence of intellectuals 44, 61 Kriegel on 97 and new political values 38 and triumph of Republic 45 and universalism 55 and use of public petitions 59 and Zola 54 Jacques Duclos cell of PCF (Aix-en-Provence) 114, 148, 232, 243–4 Dumont, René 177 Duruy, Victor 38 École Centrale (training school for PCF cadres) 182, 271 n., 288 n. École des Hautes Études Commerciales 113, 189 École Normale Supérieure: Althusser's influence at 100 Blum and Jaurès at 134 Bruhat on Communists at 183, 232 Burdeau as graduate of 45 Cogniot as student at 289 decline of stature 42 scholastic pursuits at 41 Éditions Sociales: advisory committee of 116 and Althusser's major works 255 n. diminishing output in 1980s 11 and official PCF History of France 118 publication of Cogniot's memoirs 289 sacking of Ellenstein by 158 Sève as Director of 156 Spire's work for 113 EEC (European Economic Community) 272–3 Page 9 of 25

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Index Ellenstein, Jean: articles in Le Monde 148, 198, 280 attacked by Vermeersch 288 n. Bell on 125–6 controversial views on Soviet history 116 and n. expulsion from PCF 159 n. as historian of Stalinism 276–7 Kriegel on 130 official role at CERM 249 opposition to factionalism 201 n. sacked by Éditions Sociales 158 supports PCF list in 1979 elections 121 views censored by PCF press 238 Éluard, Paul 326 ENA (École Nationale d'Administration) 27, 42 engagement, see intellectuals, French, engagement Engels, Friedrich 65, 215, 318 Enlightenment, the 20, 27 environmentalism 59, 147, 281, 309 Ethiopia 269 Eurocommunism 202 and n., 265, 267–74, 289 and n. existentialism 177–8 l'Express 115 Factionalism 196, 200–8, 249 Fanon, Frantz 176 Fascism 48, 299 Fédération des Médecins de (p.355) France 115 fellow-travellers 183 disappearance in 1980s 8–10, 121–2 Kriegel onizon. 120 n. origins and development of 119–20 Sartre and 230 feminism 59, 287 FEN (Fédération de l'Éducation Nationale) 8 Ferrat, Jean 236 Figaro, Le 129, 130, 211 Finkielkraut, Alain 311 Fiszbin, Henri: on anti-intellectualism in PCF 188 favourably reviewed by Bruhat 232–3 leader of Communist Federation of Paris 199, 243, 264, 291 leader of Rencontres Communistes 6, 206–7, 233 n., 239 pessimism of 240 and reform of Communist mentalité 205 and n. on Stalinism in PCF 279 on value of remaining inside party 230 as working-class intellectual 107–8, 182, 261 Page 10 of 25

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Index Fiterman, Charles: blames PS for 1978 Defeat 218 condemns martial law in Poland 306 criticism of PCF strategy 1990 7, 304 failure to have Communist appointed at SNCF 301 as working-class intellectual 182 Frachon, Benoiît 73 France-Nouvelle 148, 155, 160 n., 224 n.,278 crisis of 1978–80 at 157–8, 198, 238, 260–4 fraternity 49–50, 181–5 Frémontier, Jacques 193 n., 259 Frioux, Claude 295 Frossard, Louis-Oscar 39 Furet, François 254 n. Gambetta, Léon 28 n. Garaudy, Roger: on definition of working class 173 n. expulsion from PCF 139–40 and humanist Marxism 99–100, 212 and n. and official PCF philosophy 156 n., 255 turbulent intellectual trajectory of 147 n. gauchisme, gauchistes 147 and n., 176 Gaudard, Jean-Pierre 217 de Gaulle, Charles (Gaullism): Astier de la Vigerie and 120 and electoral defeats of PCF 164 and étatiste tradition 29 and problematic of state 35 return to power in 1958 48, 142–3 working-class support for 171–2, 174 Gayman, Jean-Marc 257 n. Gennevilliers 191 German social-democrats 73 Girardet, Raoul 27 n. Girault, Jacques 257 n. Giscardian government (1974–81) 76, 223 Glucksmann, André 223 Goldring, Maurice: activities at France-Nouvelle 261 and n. desire to remain inside party 229 on internal party divisions 294 on limits of party intellectuals' role 226 and political commitment 155 on problems of Communist journalists 262 on vanguardist role of PCF 197, 225 on worker—intellectual relations in party 184–5, 192 Goldthorpe, John 23 Gorz, André 173, 177 and n. Gramsci, Antonio: Page 11 of 25

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Index legacy to PCI 68 and optimism of will 153 and political role of intellectuals 67, 315 viewed with suspicion by PCF 323 Grandmont, Dominique 74 n. Gréco, Juliette 121 Gremetz, Maxime 251 Grémion, Pierre 287 Guérin, Alain 256 Guillevic, Eugène 136 Guyot, Raymond 152 n., 278 (p.356) Hanoi 176 Harris, André 182, 217 Haute Autorité 302 Haute-Vienne Federation of the PCF 304 Havana 176 Hegel, Hegelian 154, 223 Hermier, Guy 116, 263, 291 n. Herr, Lucien 46 Herriot, Édouard 46 Hervé, Pierre 158 Herzen, Alexander 21 Herzog, Philippe 116, 217 Hincker, François: on Central Committee commissions 248 n. on dialectic between domestic and external policy 268 evaluation of PCF strategy 285 n. expulsion from PCF 207, 235 n. favourable review of Ellenstein 276 n. justification of party membership 94–5 optimistic hopes of 235 on PCF attitude towards electoral defeat 218 and problem of democratic centralism 198–9 and Rencontres Communistes 233 n. on scientific politics 209 L'Humanité 160 n.: accurate report of Vitry meeting in 245 accuses Hervé of collusion with CIA 158 anti-intellectual outpourings of 150 appel on PCF position on Afghanistan 118, 294 appels au vote communiste in 5–6, 120–1, 236 n. Aragon message to 97 attacks on Sevé's philosophy in 156 n. Besse conception of scientific socialism 216 and Bobigny meeting, 1980 160 Bruhat collaboration with 118 condemns Solidarity 306 n. definition of French culture 32 denial of access to critics 198, 238 Page 12 of 25

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Index denunciation of nouvelle philosophic 223 dissident journalists at 263 falling circulation of 11 favourable review of Ellenstein in 276 Fête de 121, 301 ideological orthodoxy of 303 image of Parisian working class in 191–2 Marchais declarations in 3 n., ion. optimistic forecast of Marchais performance 207 n. on PCF position on Czechoslovakia 266 and PCF promise not to expel dissidents 241–2 and PCF strategic impasse after 1981 300–1 rebuke of Soviet human rights abuse 172 rejects Karlin—Lainé letter 315 n. Spire defence of Soviet Union in 306 whitewashes Soviet human rights abuses 293 Wurmser collaboration with 113, 231 n. L'Humanite-Dimanche 84, 181 Hungary: PCF reaction to events in 146, 147, 266 Soviet intervention in (1965) 139, 172, 178 Husák, Gustav 266 Île-St-Denis 191 IMT (Institut Maurice Thorez) 112, 117, 234 n. absence of political turbulence at 252–8 INSEE (Institut National des Statistiques et des Études Économiques) 23 n. Institut d'Études Politiques 27 intellectuals, French: emergence during Dreyfus Affair 44–6 and engagement 19, 58–60 idealist conception of political intervention 56–7 ideological realignment of 12, 18, 165–7, 222–3 opposition to state 32–3, 61 and PCF 2, 4–6, 10–11, 64, 326 political implications of changing occupations 51–4 (p.357) and republican political tradition 46–51 self-obsession of 223 SFIO as party of 134 socio-professional definition of 22–5 universalism of 35–6, 42–3, 54–6, 58 intellectuals, Latin American 103 intelligentsia 20–2, 71, 82 n. international Communist movement 138, 149, 160, 161, 200, 208, 265–74, 316 internationalism 16, 70, 265–74, 288–90, 292–4, 305–6 intra-party dispute (1978–80) 16–17, 121–32, 314, 316–17 administrative approach towards dissidents 241–7 ambiguities in social identity of participants 168–70, 180–94 continuing validity of intellectuals' grievances 302–6 contrasting consequences of 162–7, 297–314 Page 13 of 25

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Index and critique of totalitarianism 221–5 defeat of dissidents 238–40 demonstrates limits of Eurocommunism 267–74 and evaluation of Soviet experience 285–96 external and internal causes of 160–2 historical antecedents of 135–40 level of intellectual participation in 145–8 lingering attachment of participants to PCF 225–36 and PCF conception of crisis management 155–60 and problem of factionalism 200–8 and problem of intellectual autonomy 247–58 and purges in party press 258–64 and question of Stalin 274–85 and scientific conception of politics 209–21, 281 underlying motivations ofparticipants in 149–55 IRM (Institut de Recherches Marxistes) 11–12, 234 n., 237, 248, 257, 302 Islam 147 n. Ivry 189–90 lzvestia 2 Jacobins, Jacobinism 29, 61, 101, 174–5, 254, 309 Jaruszelski government (Poland) 306 Jaurès, Jean 39, 72, 134 and n. Jean, Raymond: alienation from PCF 238 definition of intellectual 106, 225 on Marchais 186 and reform of party organization 203–4 resignation from PCF 136 and strategy towards PS 218 and triumphalist rhetoric of PCF 279 n. Joliot-Curie, Frédéric 326 Judt, Tony 223, 277 n., 322 July Monarchy 37, 44 n. Juquin, Pierre: expelled from PCF 8 as internal dissident 304 reveals PCF strategy in 1981 election 298 n. and revolutionary culture in France 79–81, 175 n. and strategic subordination to Moscow 10 as working-class intellectual 182 Kanapa, Jean 116 n., 267 n., 271, 272, 288 Karlin, Daniel 302, 315 Kautsky, Karl 66 Kehayan, Nina and Jean 291–2 Koestler, Arthur 93 n. Kolakowski, Leszek 68 n., 213 n. Kolyma 311 Kominform 138 Komintern, see Communist International, Third Page 14 of 25

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Index Kriegel, Annie: definition of appareil 110 and Dreyfusard tradition 97 paradigm of PCF 127, 129–32 on PCF's view of intellectuals 135 scathing depiction of fellow-travellers 120 n. Krivine, Alain 180 n. (p.358) Khrushchev, Nikita, secret speech of, 1956 138–9, 146, 231, 275, 278 and n., 281, 289, 308 Labica, Georges 255 alienation from PCF 238 criticism of intra-party democracy 198 n., 219 n. on denial of intellectual autonomy 249–52 denounces PCF chauvinism 274 n. as dissident Communist 233, 249 Lainé, Tony 315 Lajoinie, André 2 langue de bois 95, 250, 326 La Rocque, Colonel François de 299 Laurent, Paul 315 Lavau, Georges 87–96, 98 Lazard, Francette 116, 250 n. LCR (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire) 180 and n. Lebrun, Albert 45 Le Chant du Monde 11 Lecourt, Dominique 277 Lederman, Charles 9 Lefebvre, Henri 121, 173 Lefebvre, Jean-Pierre: criticism of intra-party democracy 198 n., 219 n. on denial of intellectual autonomy 251 denounces PCF chauvinism 274 n. Left, French 80, 96, 129, 130, 164 appeal of working class to 14, 171–9, 192–3, 308–10 change in socio-political values of 12, 143, 165–7, 281, 286–7, 310–14, 323, 326 conception of culture 64 decline of 57 discourse of 79 ideological diversity of 59, 101, 134 and intellectual militancy 58 and intellectual universalism 42 PCF hegemony over 121, 171, 196 and question of vanguard 197 social origins of leaders 63 and Stalinism 275 and unity against Fascism 48, 113 Le Goff, Jacques 25 Lelouch, Claude 9 Lenin, Vladimir Ilich 66, 67, 71, 120, 200, 215, 276, 286 Page 15 of 25

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Index Leninism, Leninist 14, 101, 108, 154, 215–16, 315, 326 denounced by Trotsky 321 and PCF 63, 72, 202 n. and principle of party unity 195, 203 and Stalinism 276 Leroy, Roland 116 n., 301, 303 Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel 139, 146 Les Lettres Françaises 113, 117 Lévy, Bernard-Henri 33, 57, 223 and n. liberalism, liberal tradition 33, 35, 42, 47–8, 54, 56, 328 Liberation, the (1944) 49, 52, 57, 75, 85, 113, 117, 119, 120, 122, 135, 136, 137, 140, 145, 158, 164, 171, 175, 177, 79, 196, 299, 300 Libération 115, 298 n. Libération (fellow-travelling newspaper) 120 Lichtheim, George 97 Llabres, Claude 8 London, Αrthur 152 n. Mallet, Serge 173 Manifeste de Champigny (1968) 77 Mannheim, Kar 81–2, 82 n., 86, 101 Maoism 180 Marchais, Georgesm., 2 n., 3 n., 7, 8, 106 n., 123 n., 165 n., 305 n. on abandonment of dictatorship of proletariat 283 n. accuses opponents of factionalism 201 appearances on television 247 approves Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 265–6 on balance-sheet of socialist countries 290, 293 blames PS for 1978 defeat 218 on Cohn-Bendit 180 n. criticized by Fiszbin 206 declarations in L'Humanité 3 n., 10 n. on defence of human rights 293 definition of democratic centralism 198 denounced by dissidents 185 dismissive evaluation of dissidents 123–4 Fiterman as assistant to 182 foils challenge to leadership 304 (p.359) inadequate response to 1989–90 revolutions 294 and ingratitude of intellectuals 302 internal criticism of 303–4 interpretation of party rules 198 meeting with Brezhnev 292–3 meetings with dissidents 242 n. on merger of France-Nouvelle and Nouvelle Critique 263 official classification as worker 142 and ouvriérisme 185–8 on PCF strategy 281–2, 282 n., 283–4 performance in 1981 elections 207 n. promises not to expel dissidents 241–2 Page 16 of 25

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Index on PS ideology 310 on role of socialist states 270 as source of negative image of PCF 305 speech at Vitry meeting 148 support for 1981 candidacy in party 9, 157, 234, 236 and use of concept of Stalinism 276 Marchand, Jean-Pierre 247 Martelli, Roger 254, 278 n. scientific conception of Marxism 216–17 Marty, André 200 Marx, Karl 30, 67, 70, 96, 215, 223, 276, 286, 318 and place of intellectuals in social structure 65 and proletariat 66, 174, 190 Marxism, Marxist theory: absence of revisionist tradition in France 322–3 analytical 318 anti-intellectual tradition in 68–74 and Christianity 26 n., 212 n. and concept of totalitarianism 221–5 decline of 59, 223, 225, 286–7, 328 domination of French intellectual culture 42, 154 faith in science and progress 49 and functionalism 88 as hegemonic approach in history 254–5 Hervé criticism of PCF conception of 158 and humanism 99, 147, 212 and intellectuals' conception of science 215–21, 235, 316–17 and justice 56 millenial vision of 15 neo-Marxism 180 and PCF conception of science 209–14 as PCF instrument of social classification 195 and place of intellectuals in politics 64–8, 81, 86, 100–2 as source of PCF appeal to intellectuals 14, 103, 165 and state power 33 Maspéro 115 materialist philosophers 58 Mathiez, Albert 255 n. Matin, Le 115, 239 Mauroy government (1981–4) ideological conversion of 311 PCF ministers in 7, 17, 182, 298–9, 305–6 PCF position in 10, 300–2 Maurras, Charles 51 and n. May '68, see student movement Médecins Sans Frontières 312 Mendes-France, Pierre 134, 322 Mendras, Henri 179 n. Mer, Jacqueline 64–5, 87 Page 17 of 25

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Index Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 178, 196 Meurthe-et-Moselle Federation of the PCF 304 Michelat, Guy 116 Michelin 182 Milosz, Czeslaw 88 Mitterrand, François: dominant position after 1981 300 election to presidency 48, 166, 297–8, 309 electoral manifesto of 307 on intellectual mediocrity of PCF leaders 310 opposition to peace movement 9 PCF attempt to undermine 298 n. performance in 1965 election 172 political culture of 43 political generation of 167 presidency of 143, 299, 306 radical rhetoric of 322–3 and reformist tradition 134 n. scathing verdict on CERES 228 MLF (Mouvement de Libération de la Femme) 177 (p.360) Moissonier, Maurice 198 n., 219 n., 257 n. Molina, Gérard 201–2, 208 Mollet, Guy 134 n., 307 Monde, Le: Althusser articles in 148, 198, 219 appel on Afghanistan 294 appel against neutron bomb 9 April 1978 petition in 219 Bruhat articles in 118 n., 232–3 dissident Communist petition (on May '68) 139, 144, 159 Ellenstein articles in 148, 198, 280 as forum for intra-party debate 115 petitions in 60 relationship with French state 35 Rony articles in 251, 274 n. and silence of left-wing intellectuals 167 Monnet, Jean 328 Morin, Edgar: historical gloom of 311 lyrical view of working class 183 membership of PCF 127 n., 138, 149–50 solitude of 145 MPLA (Mouvement Populaire pour la Liberation d'Angola) 269 Munich agreement (1938) 273 n. National Front 9 n. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 269 Naville, Pierre 110, 210 Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939) 230, 274–5 Nicolet, Claude 102 Page 18 of 25

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Index Nietzsche, Friedrich 223 Noirot, Paul 278 n. on anti-intellectualism in PCF 183–4 expulsion from PCF 140, 157 on fraternity in party 181, 183 Nouvel Observateur, Le 115, 224 and n. Nouvelle Critique, La 107, 148 and intra-party dispute 157–8, 198–9, 238, 263 nouvelle philosophie 223 and n., 224, 311 Occupation, the (1940–4) 48, 137 Ogeret, Marc 5 opportunists 47, 48 optimism: Communist intellectuals' feeling of 13–17, 15–3, 231–6, 240, 316–17 erosion of 312, 318 French liberalism and 328 PCF, underlying sense of 2, 215–16 Orleanism 44 ouvriérisme, ouvriériste 185–8, 192, 239, 244, 246, 321 pacificists, pacifism 9–10, 58, 121 Pannequin, Roger 278 n. Paris 21, 25–8, 60, 62, 63, 114–15, 122, 191, 232, 249, 252 n., 259 Paris Commune (1871) 69, 236 Paris Federation of PCF 111, 243, 291 conflict with PCF leadership 199, 239, 264 Parmelin, Hélèene: Marchais meeting with 242 n. and rebellion of intellectuals 152, 228 representation of proletariat 181 resignation from PCF 295 and roots of intellectual affiliation 84 on Thorez 285 views censored by party press 238 party organization: appeal to Communist intellectuals 14, 101, 103 Baby's critique of 151 n. dependence of intellectuels de parti on 156–8 intellectuals' ambivalence towards 16, 201–8, 316 lingering intellectual attachment to 227–31, 235, 317 parallel with Church 210 n. and problem of factionalism 123–4 and scientific principles of leadership 209–21 as source of cohesion 126–9, 162–3 as weapon against dissidents 241–52. patronat 246 Paty, Michel 199 PCE, see Communist Party of Spain PCF, see Communist Party of France PCI, see Communist Party of Italy Page 19 of 25

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Index Péguy, Charles 44 (p.361) Pelloutier, Charles 187 Pensée, La 112, 199 permanents, see Communist Party of France, permanents Picasso, Pablo 146, 326 Pignon, Édouard 9, 242 Pinochet, Augusto 294 Plissonnier, Gaston 243, 245 pluralism, internal: intellectual criticism of absence of 16, 153 limits of intellectual desire for 17, 201–8, 235 PCF disagreement with Soviet party over 293 PCF suppression of 241–52, 258–64 Plyusch, Leonid 288 n. Poland, imposition of martial law in (1981) 306 and n. Poperen, Claude 8, 303 n., 304 Popular Front 113, 231, 299 as Communist construct 300 and intellectual militancy 58, 166 origins of 48, 278 and PCF appeal to intellectuals 75 political failure of 48 and promotion of cultural unity 31–2 and provision of social welfare 49 transformation of PCF under 63, 72–4 Pouget, Émile 70 Programme Commun de Gouvernement 299, 300 and political generation of Communist intellectuals 96, 129, 137–8, 165, 226, 267, 286, 307, 308 proletariat, see working class Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 69 PS, see Socialist Party psychoanalysis 211 and n. public opinion 4 n., 107 Quilès, Yvonne: on Communist journalists 262 on development of dissent 239 on internal problems of PCF 294 views censored in party press 238 work at France-Nouvelle 261 Quin, Claude 301 racism 50 Radical Party (radicalism) 31, 39–40, 46–8, 63, 80 RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens) 301 RCH (Rencontres Communistes hebdo) 206, 208 Rébérioux, Madeleine 140 reformism, reformists 70, 134, 228, 323 regionalism 59, 287, 309 Rémond, René 37 Page 20 of 25

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Index Rencontres Communistes 6, 206–8, 233 n., 239, 241, 295 republicanism, republican tradition: and Communism 31, 50, 59, 63, 101–2, 308 as cultural tradition 31–2, 51–4 as intellectual tradition 43–6, 62–4 legacy of Catholicism to 26 and mass political organization 39 as political tradition 46–51 Resistance 48, 51, 58, 152 n., 177, 183, 257, 273 n., 300 generation of Communist intellectuals 137–40, 145–6, 277 Révolution, 158, 237–8, 263, 306 n. revolutionary tradition: criticism of concept of 78–81 Ferrat on survival of 236 in French labour movement 70 and Marxist historiography 254 n. PCF as embodiment of 15 right-wing variant of 33 working class as embodiment of 86 Rigout, Marcel 12 Ristat, Jean 179 Robel, Léon 295 Robrieux, Philippe 278 n. Rocard, Micheli 34 n., 322 Rochet, Waldeck: approach towards internal debate 159 and n. criticism of 196 dissidents 144 Fiterman as assistant to 182 PCF under 189, 226, 267 n., 274 pragmatism of 137 speech at Argenteuil 212 and n. strategy criticized by Marchais 282, 284–5, 305 Rony, Jean: attitude towards student movement 147 (p.362) critique of vanguardism 220 denounces PCF chauvinism 274 n. on Marchais 186 opposition to factionalism 202–3 sacked by CERM 251–2 tardy conversion to factionalism 208 work at France-Nouvelle 261 Rosette, Marcel 163 n. Ross, George 42, 52–3 Roux, Simone 257 n. Russian social-democracy 321 Sakharov, Andrei 293–4 Sartre, Jean-Paul 178 and boat-people 312 Page 21 of 25

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Index on Camus 178, 240 conception of engagement 19, 58–9, 101, 308 on decline of Europe 176 existential acrobatics of 173 on Marxism and Communism 165 packaged by nouveaux philosophes 223 signature of petitions by 60 support for PCF 174, 177, 196–7, 230 science: as conceived by Hincker 209 intellectual critique of 215–22, 224–5, 235, 250, 281, 321 PCF approach towards 209–15 Second Empire 37, 38 Second International 66 Sédouy, Alain de 182, 217 Semprun, Jorge 109 and n., 151 Seuil 115 Sève, Lucien 156 and n., 255, 315 SFIO (Section Française de I'Internationale Ouvriere) 31, 39, 134 Shils, Edward 22 Shostakovich, Dmitri 72 Signoret, Simone 278 n. Simon, Michel 116 SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer) 301 Soboul, Albert 234 n., 255 n. Socialisme ou Barbarie 173 and n., 174 Socialist Party, Socialists (PS): alliance with PCF 129, 193, 267, 269 and n., 271 blamed for 1978 defeat 218 constraint upon PCF autonomy 10 declining intellectual enthusiasm for 313 election of Fiszbin on slate of 6 failure to change society radically 13 ideologically influenced by PCF 299 intellectuals of 147, 327 H. Lefebvre's opposition to 121 and left-wing unity 137–8 members urged to withdraw from peace movement 9 merger of Rencontres Communistes with 207 Metz Congress speech by Mitterrand 322–3 as perceived by Communist intellectuals 228–9, 235 receptivity towards new social movements 309–10 slandered by PCF leaders 246, 252 social origins of leadership 63 socialist realism 15, 108 solidarism 49 Solidarity 306 and n. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander 292, 275 and n., 277, 286 Sorel, Georges 68–9 Page 22 of 25

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Index SOS Racisme 177 Soviet Union, Soviet political system 1, 2, 20, 21, 71, 108, 116 n., 137, 178, 208, 224, 236, 239, 320 Communist intellectuals and 14, 15, 101, 103, 120, 145, 171, 231, 285–96, 311 PCF links with 17, 150, 172, 265–74, 303, 305–6 see also Communist Party, Soviet Union; international Communist movement; Stalinism Spire, Antoine: career as party official 113 and intellectual self-assertionv 168 optimism concerning intra-party dispute 153 on problem of social interaction with working class 189–90, 192 resignation from PCF 136 on Sève 156 on totalitarianism 221–2 views censored by PCF press 238 Spire, Arnaud 306 (p.363) Stalin, Joseph 72, 139, 215, 223 Stalinism: Communist intellectuals influenced by 58, 110, 127 and n., 139, 178, 183, 210, 236, 256 n. and culture 74, 108 in international Communist movement 72, 85 n. PCF defence of 138, 231, 289 and PCF organization 150, 152, 161, 187, 200, 245 as period of rule 93, 113, 145, 149, 154, 170–1, 209–10, 212, 308 as problem in intra-party debate 274–85 as social revolution 71–3 theoretical principles of 64, 88, 109, 134, 175, 177, 185, 215–16, 232, 246 state, French: and Communist intellectuals 101–2 leading role in cultural activity 30–2 and mass media 34–5 relationship with intellectuals 19, 38–9, 60–1 and school teachers 34, 36, 40 tortuous growth 27 tradition of étatisme 28–9 Stil, André 171, 230–1 structuralists 61 student movement of 1968 (May '68): and Communist intellectuals 138–9, 147, 217 and development of ethical individualism 179 frosty PCF response to 159, 161, 281 and ideological realignment of Left 310 as new form of revolutionary agency 176 and radical political protest 59 and working class 174–5 Supreme Soviet 259 surrealist writers 58 Page 23 of 25

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Index syndicalism, syndicalists 63, 69–70, 73, 132, 134, 180, 187, 322 see also anarchists, anarchism Tailleferre, Germaine 5 Thibaudet, Albert 40, 44 Thorez, Maurice 137, 288 Césaire letter to 135 definition of Marxism as science 215, 217 emergence as PCF leader 73 intellectual formation of 186 misleads PCF over de-Stalinization 278 as object of cult of personality 211 on parallel between party and Church 210 n. Parmelin on 285 on pauperization of working class 172 PCF during leadership of 110–12, 151–2, 152 n., 153, 154–6, 158–9, 203, 216, 255– 6, 266, 274, 275, 276 on poverty of culture under capitalism 76 puts down Picasso 146 strategy criticized by Marchais 282, 284–5, 305 Tillon, Charles 200, 278 n. Tortel, Jean 120 and n. Touraine, Alain 173–4 n. Treint, Albert 39 Trintignant, Jean-Louis 9 Trotsky, Leon, Trotskyism 72, 116, 173, 180, 321 Tsarist regime 67, 72, 276 twenty-one conditions (1920) 200 and n. union de la gauche 7, 186, 299 defeat in 1978 of 125, 162, 166 n., 217–18, 222 n. 228, 232, 234, 252, 270–1, 297 intellectual attempts to revive 147, 160, 260, 274 as PCF strategy 137–8, 268–9, 269 n., 280–1, 283, 284 Union dans les Luttes 147, 233 United States 49 USSR, see Soviet Union Vaillant-Couturier, Paul 32 vanguard, vanguardism 216, 227, 281, 285 n., 296, 320, 321, 323 as focus of intra-party debate 196, 200, 220–1, 233, 235, 245 limits of intellectual critique of 201–8, 229–31 Vargas, Yves 201–2 Vasseur, Bernard 223 n. (p.364) Vendredi 113 Venturi, Franco 21 Verdès-Leroux, Jeannine 84–5, 325 Vermeersch, Jeannette 288 and n., 289 n. Vernier, France 107 Versailles 31 Vichy regime 37, 48 Villefosse, Louis de 183 Vitez, Antoine 9, 295 Page 24 of 25

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Index Vitry, Communist municipality of 136 Vitry meeting (1978) 148, 160, 185 n., 187 n., 199, 242, 245, 246, 247, 249, 252, 257, 274, 280, 284, 290 Vlady, Marina 121 Vovelle, Michel 233–4, 234 n., 258 n. Warsaw Pact 139, 147 n., 266 Weil, Simone 33 working class: autonomy of 69, 149 convergence with intellectuals 68, 77–8 functionalist account of 87, 91–2 imputed beliefs and values of 15, 64, 71, 109, 150, 210 Marxist derivation of identity of 65, 173 in PCF counter-community 125, 128, 130, 134, 170 as perceived by Communist intellectuals 169–71, 180–94, 321, 323 as seen by French Left 171–9, 308–10 as source of intellectual identification with PCF 14, 16, 84, 86, 101–3, 110, 168, 235, 316 Wurmser, André: belief in rationality of history 231–2 career as party intellectual 112–13 on disaffiliation of intellectuals 240 on PCF strategic impasse 300–1 staunch defence of Soviet Union 145–6, 289–90 Yugoslavia 138 Yvetot, Georges 69 Zola, Émile 44, 54

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