French CP leaders plagued by outbreak of discussion

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The leaders of the CP in France continue, less and less convincingly, to say that they 'welcome' the outbreak of discussion within the party and that there will be no expulsions.

Leading intellectuals and longstanding members have, however, had critical articles submitted to the party press rejected.

What has followed is a wave of articles by party members in non-party papers:

Sections of the bourgeois press have been only too glad to boost their sales among CP members.

The two most notorious series of articles to date are those of the historian Jean Ellenstein, head of the CP's Centre for Marxist Studies and of the well-known philosopher Louis Althusser, both of which have been published by the capitalist newspaper Le Monde.

Different

In many respects the positions of these two Stalinist intellectuals is very different.

Ellenstein wants the party to go rapidly further down the road to explicit reformism.

He implies clearly that, like the Spanish CP, the French party should cease describing itself as "Leninist"

It is not, he says, that we have had too much of the 22nd Congress lat which the dictatorship of the proletariat was -and I....had enough.

Ellenstein's right-wing position, which is known to have some support on the Central Committee, also includes calling into question the theory of dialectical materialism and raising the need for a political opening towards christians.

Marchais One leading member, close to Ellenstein's politics has resigned in protest from his post as editor of a CP journal.

Other participants public discussion have said that Ellenstein doesn't go far enough.

In particular they ha re argued to do with socialism and is completely anti-socialist.

This is, of course, an extremely reactionary position as it makes no mention of the contrast between the bureaucratic role of the Soviet Union and its socialised property relations and does not call for a defence of the property relations against imperialism.

Apparently at an opposite political pole from Ellenstein stands Althusser who presents himself as a "Leninist" and believes the party should return to "revolutionary" positions.

Alliance

But whatever may be the political differences between these long-standing Stalinists, they are now effectively in an alliance against the party leadership.

They are playing down their political differences and launching an obviously coordinated attack on the internal regime of the On this, Althusser pulls least punches. He attacks in detail the way in which the Marchais leadership inexplicably reverses its political positions by 180 degrees without explanation, the way in which it "parachutes" completely new slogans into the party without the slightest discussion or preparation.

He attacks some of the slogans directly, such as "Make the rich pay"

"The working class, including mum wage, doesn't spontaneously recognise itself as suffering from poverty, which is a nineteenth century notion, with its overtones of philanthropy and charity; one of the conquests of the workers' movement has been to lead the workers to think of themselves not as 'poor' but as exploited productive workers"

Althusser's main attack, however, is not political but organisational. He describes the party as "a machine to dominate, control and manipulate the militants ...' it is clear that the pressure of opposition within the party goes much deeper than few individualistic intellectuals and comes also from wide sections of the party's base, disillusioned after the election defeat in March.

In the youth organisation in some areas, members have been refusing to sell the paper because of what they call the "total poverty" of its contents.

The Marchais leadership would appear to be in considerable difficulties: by refusing to permit the debate to take place inside the party it finds itself with a full-scale public debate between party members taking place outside the party and out of its control.

Statement

Though he denies that the rot has spread from the intellectuals Marchais was constrained to pubfish an angry five page statement in the CP dailv L 'Humanite last unanimously" by 121 the members of the Central Committee, said that the party would not "let itself be torn apart by some vague petty bourgeois anarchism"

Marchais would dearly like to dismiss all his opponents in this way-and intellectuals like Ellenstein certainly help him to do so.

But there is no doubt that recent events have set off a deep questioning of the CP's strategy within the working class base of the party, which does not have access to the columns of Le Monde.

It is this which gave Marchais most cause for alarm.

Sections of this base could now be won to a principled, independent, political line.

Whether this happens now depends upon how those who call themselves Trotskyist in France intervene in relation to the discussion the Stalinist leadership wants to strangle at birth.

IN BRIEF The Frolinat (National Liberation Front) has called for a general strike and demonstrations in N'Djamena the capital of Chad, to protest against the fresh arrival of imperialist forces.

The French governmentimperialism's watchful policeman in west Africa- has sent further "advisers' and now bombers to aid the military government of General Felix Mallnum in ite

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