Resolution of the ECCI on the French Communist Party [1]¶
Core Argument¶
The June 1922 resolution of the Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, adopted on a report by Trotsky, constitutes a comprehensive intervention to restructure the French Communist Party along Leninist lines, demanding an end to its chronic factionalism, federalism, and petty-bourgeois intellectualism. The core argument is that the French party, despite its formal adherence to the Comintern, remains organisationally and ideologically unfit for revolutionary struggle, and must be forcibly remoulded through a new programme, centralised discipline, and a purge of hostile elements.
The resolution makes several key claims. First, the party’s structure is condemned as incompatible with revolutionary centralism. The Central Committee must be composed of a majority of workers genuinely tied to the masses, with all members working full-time for the party or unions. The Seine Federation, with its oversized committee of one hundred members and its federalist principles, is singled out as a direct threat. The resolution explicitly rejects any analogy between the federal structure of the Soviet state and the party, insisting that the Communist Party must be “unified and rigidly centralised,” citing the example of the Ukrainian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani parties within the USSR as models of democratic centralism, not federalism. The Central Committee must have the power to expel members or groups summarily on political grounds, bypassing any committee on grievances.
Second, the trade-union question is framed as a struggle against “individualistic, petty-bourgeois elements” like Verdier and Quinton, who exploit the slogan of trade-union autonomy to build cliques and undermine party control. The resolution demands a “merciless war” against such elements, their expulsion from the party, and the establishment of disciplined communist cells inside the reformist CGT, even as the party supports the rival CGTU.
Third, the united front tactic is defended against its misrepresentation in the French press. The resolution dismisses the charge that the Committee of Nine (linking the three Internationals) constituted a supra-International body, insisting it was merely a provisional executive under Comintern control. It invokes the Paris Commune as a historical precedent for a united front of all working-class organisations against the bourgeoisie, arguing that the Commune’s defeat was due precisely to the absence of a “genuine revolutionary, disciplined and resolute organisation” capable of seizing leadership. The “Left Bloc” strategy—an electoral alliance with bourgeois radicals—is condemned as a grave danger, to be countered by the demand for a workers’ government and the independent running of communist candidates.
The polemic is sharpest against the party’s right wing, centred on the Journal du Peuple, and against specific individuals. Daniel Renoult, editor of l’Internationale, is censured for violating his solemn pledge to implement the united front tactic, instead campaigning against it at the Seine Federation conference. The Fabre case is presented as a symptom of the deeper malady of “intellectual anarcho-journalistic bohemia,” a tradition that produced turncoats like Briand and Hervé, who began as revolutionary anarchists and ended as monarchists. The resolution demands that the party press abandon the habits of bourgeois journalism, publish unsigned leading articles as the voice of the party, and never print criticism of adopted Comintern decisions except as framed discussion pieces. The left wing is warned not to crystallise into a separate faction, but to work within party institutions against reformist, pacifist, and anarcho-syndicalist deviations. The entire resolution is a demand for the subordination of French communist particularism to the iron discipline of the International.