From the ECCI to the Central Committee of the French Communist Party¶
Core Argument¶
Digest: From the ECCI to the Central Committee of the French Communist Party¶
This document, dated 12 May 1922, constitutes a severe intervention by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) into the affairs of the French Communist Party (PCF), charging its leadership with systematic passivity, evasion, and failure to enforce Comintern discipline. The core argument is that the PCF's leading bodies, far from consolidating the party on revolutionary foundations, have permitted it to become more amorphous, allowing bourgeois public opinion to exert pressure through a right-wing opportunist faction that is numerically weak but disproportionately influential.
The ECCI's central indictment concerns the case of Fabre and his newspaper Journal du Peuple, described as "absolutely alien and hostile to the spirit of the Communist International" and a private venture by an individual posing as a party member. The ECCI had already declared this a dangerous wound requiring cauterisation, yet the Central Committee reduced the matter to a formal procedural inquiry, forcing the International to invoke Article Nine of its statutes and expel Fabre directly. This is presented as symptomatic of a deeper malady: the party's refusal to enforce its own decisions or those of the International.
The document then turns to the trade-union question, accusing the party of systematic capitulation to syndicalist and anarchist elements under the pretext of maintaining good relations. The ECCI insists that the party must assume the offensive ideologically, place all communists in the unions under strict control, and expel those who use "autonomy" as a pretext for debilitating work. On the united front tactic, the ECCI identifies a paradox: the rightist elements who support Journal du Peuple simultaneously pose as the most irreconcilable opponents of the united front, masking passivity with verbal intransigence. The party press, including l'Humanité and Internationale, is accused of conducting an irreconcilable campaign against a tactic already adopted by the Comintern majority, supplying ammunition to enemies and constituting not discussion but sabotage.
The ECCI further charges the Central Committee with creating an atmosphere in which International decisions are presented as externally imposed ultimatums, complied with formally while the party rank and file is made aware of the leadership's negative attitude. A detailed review of relations shows the ECCI repeatedly seeking direct discussion—through letters, delegates, and invitations to Frossard and Cachin—only to be met with silence, evasion, and passive resistance. The document draws on the experience of the Third World Congress and the Marseilles Convention, contrasting the unanimous agreement of French delegates in Moscow with the subsequent failure to implement decisions in France. The polemic is directed squarely at the Central Committee's dilatory tactics, which the ECCI declares have been "amply tested and have led only to negative results," demanding clear guarantees and warning that continued violations of discipline will provoke resolute resistance from the International as a whole.