French Stalinists Back Reaction¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter from Socialist Appeal (Vol. 7, No. 11) delivers a polemical dissection of the French Communist Party’s (PCF) role as a reactionary force in post-war France, arguing that the PCF has abandoned revolutionary internationalism for nationalist class collaboration. The core narrative thrust is that the PCF, despite its mass membership, functions as an instrument of Stalin’s foreign policy and a bulwark of French capitalism, not as a vehicle for working-class emancipation.
The chapter opens by interrogating the PCF’s boastful membership claims. Leader Maurice Thorez asserts 706,729 cards delivered, heading toward a million, but the Manchester Guardian correspondent reveals a more modest 616,330 registered adherents by May 1945, compared to 385,000 at the end of 1944. This discrepancy is used to puncture the Stalinist propaganda machine. The real indictment, however, is political. The chapter draws on the Guardian’s cynical observation that the PCF simultaneously offers the allure of being the extreme left while building a disciplined, orderly organisation that claims to be the heir of France’s historical traditions — exemplified by André Marty, the 1919 Black Sea mutineer, honouring General Hoche, a revolutionary general from France’s monarchist past. This is contrasted with the heroic tradition of the Paris Commune of 1871, which the PCF has abandoned for nationalism and chauvinism.
The key evidence of this betrayal is the PCF’s continued participation in a government that has “brutally murdered thousands of workers in Algeria and Syria.” The chapter then reproduces a Guardian report of Thorez’s speech to miners, where his main purpose was not constitutional debate but impressing upon miners the necessity of producing more coal, denouncing absenteeism and lack of discipline, and telling them there must be no strikes because “the nation needed coal.” This is coupled with Benoit Franchon’s article telling miners to obey engineers and managers. The chapter explicitly compares this to the British context, calling it the “same old tune”: workers must obey while bosses enriched under Nazi rule continue to exploit them. The PCF’s Stakhanovist campaign is presented as a bid to strengthen its position with the general public and recruit engineers and foremen into the CGT.
The chapter’s polemic is sharpest against the PCF’s double-dealing on the constitutional question. The PCF denounced de Gaulle’s proposed constitution as Bonapartist, yet its two ministers voted unanimously for it in the Council of Ministers. The Guardian correspondent’s characterisation of the PCF Congress — “no discussions – only instructions and explanations” — is deployed to illustrate the lack of internal democracy. The secret of the PCF’s hold over rank-and-file workers is identified as its association with the triumph of the Russian Revolution and the Red Army, a legacy the chapter insists has nothing to do with the “Stalinist usurpers.” The campaign of lies, vilification, and persecution against Trotskyists — including the smear term “Hitlerotrotskist” — is read as fear of developing internal criticism. The chapter concludes by asserting that the programme of Bolshevism, of Lenin and Trotsky, is represented only by the Fourth International.