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The Decline of the French Communist Party:
The Party Education System as a Brake to Change, 1945-90
This PhD Thesis was successfully completed at the University of Portsmouth in 2000. A copy of the thesis has been deposited at the university library in Portsmouth and the People’s Archives (Kansan Arkisto) in Helsinki, Finland.
French communism was in long-term decline well before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, the watershed which finally undermined the relevance and credibility of communist parties throughout Europe. For many years, scholars of French politics had been conducting studies into the decline of the PCF and analysing the main contributory causes, namely the transformation of socio-economic structures in France since the late 1960s; institutional factors, ie, presidentialism resulting in particular from the 1962 constitutional reform, and bipolarisation involving the creation of alternative governing alliances; the rise of the French Socialist Party (PS) since 1974; and the sharp deterioration of the Soviet image in French opinion, in particular since the 1970s. [1] There was un- animous agreement that the party leadership with its orthodox regime and intransigent practices was the one common denominator, le fil rouge which ran through the process of decline. The novelty of the approach adopted in this work is that, whilst not denying the importance of the other contributory factors, it focuses primarily on the party leadership’s own complacency and inability to adapt to changes which were taking place in the party’s social, institutional, political and international environment.
Chapter One provides an overview of the contemporary decline of the French Communist Party (PCF) and an examination of the exogenous causes to which the decline has been traditionally attributed. This examination of the leadership’s own role in the marginalisation of the PCF reveals the extent of the damage inflicted. Under its ‘workerist’ and anti-PS leadership, the party lost touch with the social realities in France. Moreover, the leadership miscalculated the balance of power on the French left and ignored for too long the institutional threats; these miscalculations also led to serious strategic errors concerning the potential of the rejuvenated Socialist Party. Finally, the unconditional solidarity with the Soviet Union as advocated by the PCF leadership caused the deterioration of the image of the entire communist movement in France. However, there was no inherent characteristic of the PCF which forced it to remain a victim of its history and prevented it from responding and adapting to changes in the party’s social, institutional, political and international environment. The fact that the party did not in fact make this adaptation, and that its choices turned out to be the wrong ones, was the consequence of the decisions and actions of the leadership at decisive turning points of the party’s life. The communist leadership, from 1956 onward, consistently thwarted the emergence of healthier options which might have steered the party into clearer waters, away from its stormy stalinist past. Any significant changes in the PCF’s modus operandi that might have permitted it to take advantage of opportunities on offer rather than allow these opportunities to be transformed into disadvantages, were always made too late — if in fact they were made at all. Ironically, the PCF — an entity whose aims and very raison d’être were built upon the concept of radical revolution — remained an organisation with deep-rooted conservatism at its very core and its collective memory fixated by perceptions of its heroic past.
This suggested that the roots of the decline had to be sought primarily from within rather than without. Chapter Two examines the party’s mode of functioning and its internal dynamics and reveals the extent to which the communist leadership was in fact able to make use of the party’s organisational principle of democratic centralism in order to retain its disproportionate power. [2] This in turn prompts the question of why and how the communist leadership was able to implement a principle — which seemed in theory to be highly democratic — in such an undemocratic way. The answer is simple: it had at its disposal a trained body of functionaries and militants who would unquestioningly apply party policy and thwart any attempt to oppose it. Therefore, while democratic centralism formed the infrastructure and framework for the way the party functioned, it was only permitted to do so within the context of the communist theory and ideology which acted as the ‘cement’ or discipline holding the party together. Since the discipline of a communist party relies heavily on the conviction and commitment of its members, it is evident that their loyalty to the party would not develop to the necessary degree without a systematic strengthening of their grasp of party theory and ideology. Theory and ideology therefore had to be taught. This provided the pons asinorum for my study: by dovetailing the functions of democratic centralism and political education, the leadership succeeded in adroitly securing all the power in its own hands and thus ensured its own succession by ideologically reliable cadres.
The PCF was of course not the only party to set up a political education system; nor was political education the only means used in the process of political socialisation. [3] Chapter Two also in- vestigates political education as one element in political socialisation and reveals that the advantages of an efficient training system had been understood by political movements at an early stage. [4]
The virtual absence of previous scholarly investigation of the PCF’s political education system confirmed the belief that my study would indeed fill a major gap. Only one work had dealt with the establishment of the Party’s training schools, namely Danielle Tartakowsky’s doctoral thesis Ecoles et Editions communistes 1921-33, which was completed in 1977. [5] Bernard Pudal’s book, Prendre parti (1989), also started life as a doctoral thesis, and although it mainly deals with the PCF’s leadership group (groupe dirigeant) in the 1934-39 period, it also provides valuable information about the communist party training system during that time. [6] The PCF’s Education Sector in Paris also confirmed that the postwar period had never been systematically researched, and that its records concerning party education at the Service central de documentation (Colonel-Fabien, Paris) and at the Ecole nationale (in Draveil, near Paris) had not been exploited to that end. It was therefore clear that the subject was more than ripe for an in-depth investigation. We were also able to demonstrate that it was in fact a precondition of formal political instruction that its recipients should have already been exposed to a number of other agencies of socialisation. [7] This enabled us to establish the crucial importance of the party political education system as the final piece in the jigsaw that made up the fully trained and successfully politically socialised ‘ideal cadre’.
The historical origins of the PCF’s political education system and its development during the interwar years constitute the principal theme for Chapter Three. The PCF’s system for political training was set up in the 1920s. Since the early architects of the education programmes had little understanding of the workings of a communist party and a very hazy idea of marxism, the training of the party cadres was unsystematic and experimental, and mostly supervised by foreign nationals under the watchful eye of the Comintern. Many PCF members received their higher political education in the Soviet Union. It was not until the PCF made the critical transition to a mass-based political party in the Popular Front era that the French party leadership came to fully understand the value and importance of an efficient political education system to satisfy the party’s urgent need for trained militants. The setting up of a stable school network was also helped by the fact that by then, the Comintern-imposed bolshevisation process had been successfully completed in the French Communist Party. This resulted in the formation of the predominantly working-class leadership, the groupe dirigeant fondamental, with Maurice Thorez at its helm. Thorez’s leadership group would remain solid until his retirement some 30 years later. Significantly, the Thorezian regime also bequeathed to its successors the rigidly structured training system which had already made a vital contribution to the creation and maintenance of party unity and cohesion following the turbulence of the earlier decade.
The entire political training network of the PCF perished during the Second World War. An examination of the postwar era up to 1964 provides the backdrop for Chapter Four. As the PCF began to mature as a complex political organisation, it was faced with new responsibilities, both at national and local level, which required ideologically correct leadership skills and a far greater degree of organisational cohesion than hitherto. The party also needed reliable functionaries to operate the vast internal apparatus that had been built up, and trained cadres to direct its mass mobilisation work. By the 1950s, the PCF’s network of schools was operating successfully at all three levels. Our investigation reveals the tactical logic behind the structure of the party school network: advanced degrees of political training went hand-in-hand with advanced degrees of involvement, commitment and advancement in the party. [8] At the base there were the elementary schools, which provided political education for the new recruits, equipping them with a certain minimum of political education and creating a sense of commitment and belonging so that their membership would not remain merely nominal. At the next stage, the federal schools were designed for those who had already completed the elementary school programme and had certain responsibilities in the party at cell, section or federal level. The apex of this network of schools was the one or four-month central schools which were intended for those with considerable organisational experience, leadership potential and an unshakeable loyalty to the party. Candidates to the central school programmes were put forward by their federations; however, since the Education Sector of the PCF’s Central Committee made the final decision after consulting the student’s personal record, it meant that the selection process in the elite establishments was under the strict control of the leadership.
Soviet influence remained strong in the PCF’s political education system well into the 1970s and an important number of the major figures in the party were trained in Moscow. [9] The selection process was supervised by both the PCF and the CPSU to ensure that only ‘trustworthy’ people were sent. It is a testimony to their unshakeable loyalty and the efficacy of the training process that even after seeing the Soviet reality with their own eyes, most of them remained faithful to their ideals.
The study programmes were also drawn up by the Education Sector. As the schools were not ‘schools’ in the traditional sense of the word, there were very few subjects per se (marxist philosophy, political economy and history were central themes common to all eras); instead, the teaching tended to focus on various traditional or topical ‘themes’ relevant to a particular period. The ‘themes’ were generally based on the resolutions and decisions of the party congresses and accurately reflected the changes and shifts of party policy as determined by political circumstances and developments in France and abroad (usually, in the Soviet Union) at any given time.
The study programmes were always backed up by an extensive and compulsory reading programme whose contents faithfully mirrored and reinforced the current party line and thinking. The practical side of the course programmes was dealt with the teaching of routine political tasks, travaux pratiques, whose content and form hardly changed from one decade to another. Study sessions were also accompanied by debates, discussions and group work the purpose of which was to accustom the students to team work and also to ‘supervise’ their thinking process. These sessions were directed by experienced party instructors who did not need to fear any challenges from their carefully selected students who shared their basic mindset.
This programme of theoretical and practical study was lightened by a cultural programme which was first introduced in the 1930s by Etienne Fajon and remained subsequently a standard feature of the party schools. ‘Teaching culture’ — a job carried out by ‘reliable’ party intellectuals — also followed the trends of the era concerned, from the adulation of socialist realism to more modern cultural concepts in later years.
By the 1950s, the political education system, then, already presented in many ways a mirror image of the party. Like the PCF, it too appeared successful, enthusiastic and dynamic in the immediate postwar era; and just like the PCF, isolated from mainstream politics in France, the political education system then threw itself into the feverish counter-community life style in order to help preserve communist identity and values in the hostile environment. In this activity it proved its worth by maintaining the morale and motivation of party members, militants and cadres and by acting as an invaluable mechanism for safeguarding the leadership’s authority, even when that leadership was physically absent (as Maurice Thorez was in the early 1950s). But the early triumphs of the communist education system also contained the seeds of its own downfall; the training procedures and methods developed in this era still governed the preparation of French communist cadres in the 1980s and beyond.
Chapter Five outlines the development of the political education system during the animated and challenging period 1965-80. Cautious changes in the PCF as advocated first by Waldeck Rochet’s leadership were reflected in the political education programmes, as they introduced the concept of a Common Programme to the trainee cadres and guided them on the path towards the Left Union between the Communists and Socialists. This was followed by attempts to change the rigid methods of teaching by allowing more open debate and free discussion; again, this mirrored the PCF’s efforts towards more openness and flexibility in the early 1970s. Ironically, the PCF’s new strategy of alliance building and openness made the education system’s traditional role as a reinforcer of party identity somewhat redundant in the early days of the Left Union. However, this function was quickly reactivated when the communist leadership returned to its isolation and its policy of centralité ouvrière (ie, the belief that the working class should play a central and dominant role in society and politics). This policy was reflected in the social origins of the central schools’ student population, in particular those of the PCF’s elite four-month central schools, where students from working-class background dominated. [10] On the other hand, coupled with the rise of the middle class, this period also saw the emergence of a new type of student and party member, better educated and better informed than in the past, who now began to express criticism of the ‘simplistic’ study programmes and methods used in party schools. [11] This new development was in clear conflict with the ‘reproletarisation’ programme which the communist leadership, by systematically favouring the access of working-class students to the higher echelons of the party, was preparing to implement at the precise time when the working class in France was diminishing significantly.
The accelerated and unrelenting decline of the PCF in 1981-90 forms the setting for the sixth and final chapter of this study. An assessment of the study programmes demonstrates how the planners of the education programmes responded to the national and international events: the incoherent and vague strategies which were prompted by the party’s needs to survive were simply conveyed to the dwindling student audience in party schools. [12] While the training system had previously proved a useful means of introducing, updating and maintaining the party’s strategic choices, it now had nothing coherent to convey. The hastily prepared study programmes were merely responses to the slogans of the party congresses and the Marchais leadership and lacked inspiration and intellectual vision. With the membership in decline, militancy on the wane, and student numbers less than half of those in the previous decade, the whole relevance of the education system seemed in doubt. The final blow came with the collapse of communism; this was the last chance for the party and the education system which it controlled, to engage in a self-critique and respond in a new manner. The party would not, and the education system therefore could not; they thus continued to perpetuate the inflexibility, immobilism and conservatism that had been their trademarks for much of their existence.
In sum, then, there emerges a picture of a tightly-knit system controlled by an orthodox and powerful leadership, a leadership who wished above all to ensure that it would eventually be succeeded by purposely trained cadres who would in turn obediently perpetuate the conservative outlook of their predecessors. Stalin’s dictum, ‘cadres decide everything’, was taken seriously: the education system remained firmly as the leadership’s private domain. It is important to note that this political training system was efficiently safeguarded and held in place by the party’s organisational principle of democratic centralism and furthermore, both training system and organisational principle were very closely connected: the internal political education system propped up democratic centralism by supplying ‘suitable material’ to implement it, while democratic centralism in turn provided the framework for the dissemination of the orthodox ideology. The communist political education system therefore formed one of the most important institutions for the perpetuation of the private and all embracing world of French communism, and the issue of how the PCF trained its leadership is pivotal to the understanding of the party’s history and evolution.
