FRANCE: The New Communism

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A major political drama is unfolding in Western Europe: the Communists' attempt to gain power by asserting that their brand of Marxism is just a benign, reformist force, quite unrelated to Moscow. They have said this before, of course, but they are now pushing the line to the point of no longer even sounding like Communists. Will non-Communist parties believe the line? If not, what will they do about it? All this may well be the most serious challenge to democratic values and security in Europe since the cold war.

The latest episode happened last week. In the "Red Belt" Paris suburb of St. Ouen, 1,600 French Communists filed into an oyster-shaped sports arena for their 22nd Party Congress. A sign inside the hall proclaimed: A DEMOCRATIC ROAD TO SOCIALISM—A SOCIALISM FOR FRANCE. Party Leader Georges Marchais amplified that soothing slogan in a five-hour opening address that amounted to a cautious declaration of independence from Moscow.

Repressive Measures. Marchais did pay some of the traditional tributes to Soviet Communism, lauding its social accomplishments and democratic structures, even pledging to fight "anti-Sovietism." But he also underscored French Communism's new autonomy by attacking "repressive measures" taken by the Soviet Union against dissidents (see following story) in extraordinarily blunt language. Said he: "We cannot agree to the Communist ideal being stained by unjust and unjustifiable acts.

Such acts are in no way a necessary consequence of socialism." The party boss went on to argue that "our road to socialism is an original road . . . a French road. France today is neither Russia in 1917 nor Czechoslovakia in 1948." Thus "no party or group of parties"—meaning, clearly, the Soviet bloc—"can legislate for the others." France's Communist way, he urged, should be to seek a broad coalition beyond just the left—not merely with socialists but with "all forces of the nation active against the barons of large capital." Though he has variously favored and rejected power sharing in the past, Marchais again prefers some role in government to sterile opposition from the outside. "Because the workers and their Communist Party were excluded from responsibility," he told the congress, "a policy was followed that was against the interests of the workers and the nation."

Disavowing the central Marxist doctrine of a dictatorship of the proletariat as out of date, Marchais argued instead that his party's call was to unite the working class with the salaried middle class. In a blatant appeal to Roman Catholic voters, he decried loose morals and praised François Cardinal Marty, the Archbishop of Paris, for his recent outspoken criticism of the lucrative French armaments trade. Marchais also scorned collectivism as a "barracks Communism that casts everyone and everything in the same mold." The French party, he insisted, does not want "uniformity that stifles, but diversity that enriches."