From the ECCI to the Paris Convention of the French Communist Party [1]¶
Core Argument¶
From the ECCI to the Paris Convention of the French Communist Party
Ahead of the French Communist Party’s 1922 convention, the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) issued a searching diagnosis of the party’s deep crisis, tracing its roots to the flawed transformation at Tours. The party had been converted from a socialist organisation poisoned by democratic patriotism into a Communist Party without critically assimilating communist theory. When European bourgeois society subsequently stabilised, reformist, pacifist and democratic prejudices formally renounced at Tours were revived. The influx of revolutionary syndicalists, who were not remoulded by the party but instead imposed anarcho-syndicalist views, further worsened ideological chaos.
The ECCI categorised four internal groupings. The Right Wing camouflaged reformism through pacifism, appeals to ‘freedom of opinion’, and nationalist insinuations against the International. The ‘Extreme Left’ contained both revolutionary material and anarcho-reformist elements prone to blocs with the Right. The Left Tendency upheld communist principles and party unity. The Centre lacked independent political physiognomy and failed to counter the Right. Against this fragmentation, the ECCI argued that the united front policy was essential for breaking the conservative, sectarian traditions of the French labour movement and fusing the working-class majority into revolutionary action. The policy did not aim to convert reformist leaders like Jouhaux or Blum, but to break the conservatism of their organisations and open a path for mass action.
In France, the united front was most urgent due to the split in the trade-union movement. Both Jouhaux’s reformist CGT and the anarcho-syndicalist-led CGTU bore responsibility for serving narrow clique interests. The party must fight to restore trade-union unity immediately, publicly proposing joint action to both confederations on every occasion. The slogan of a workers’ government should be advanced agitationaly, counterposed to the bourgeois bloc, as a means to rally the working-class majority. The cardinal political task was the struggle against the Versailles Treaty and the reparations regime, which propped up French capitalism as the main counter-revolutionary force in Europe. Rejection of national defence was insufficient; only active struggle against the fruits of Versailles gave revolutionary content to internationalism.
Organisationally, the Central Committee must unify left and centre against the right, and its majority must be workers with close trade-union ties. The party had the duty to seek leadership in the unions through open communist work and party discipline, ending anarcho-syndicalist clique control. The ECCI insisted that its demanding stance toward the French party was equally a demand on itself, reflecting confidence in the revolutionary development of the world proletariat, especially France’s. An enclosure on Germany argued that the impending merger of the SPG and ISPG was a caricature of the united front, imposed by reformist leaders to conceal bankruptcy, while the Communist Party continued genuine united front work through Action Committees and factory delegates.