Preface to The Communist Movement in France [1]¶
Core Argument¶
In this preface, written in March 1923, Trotsky argues that the French proletariat holds the master-key to the European and world revolutionary situation. Because imperialist France is the dominant power on the continent, the victory of the revolution in Paris would seal the fate of British capitalism and enable revolutionary Europe to speak “convincing words” to the oligarchy ruling America. The immense historical responsibility thus falls on the French Communist Party, which must be correspondingly self-exacting and intransigent.
Trotsky’s core narrative thrust is that the French party has, through its recent internal struggles, cut its “real revolutionary teeth.” He personifies this progress in two symmetrical events: the departure of Ludovic-Oscar Frossard, the party’s former General Secretary, and the adherence of Pierre Monatte and Henri Barbusse. Frossard is treated not as a unique national peculiarity but as a representative of an international type—left centrism. Trotsky draws a comparative typology of such figures: Serrati in Italy, Paul Levi and Friesland in Germany, and analogous figures in Czechoslovakia and Norway. All were eminent “leaders” who had placed themselves at the head of communist parties after the war, but whose roots remained sunk in the old deposits of reformism, nationalism, and parliamentarianism. They resembled moderate liberals in a revolution: flattered by the first awakening of the masses, but horrified when the revolutionary workers failed to distinguish between the old overlords and their loyal opposition. At that point, they invariably threw themselves into the arms of reaction.
Trotsky defends the tempo of the Communist International’s policy toward France against critics who thought it too patient. He argues that a premature split in 1921 would have been misunderstood by the party rank-and-file and would have left the left faction itself ideologically unformed. The lag in French political development—victorious France passed through the post-war years without profound upheavals, unlike defeated Germany or half-defeated Italy—had a positive side: it allowed the left wing to prepare itself ideologically before facing major tests. The Fourth Congress’s “surgical operation”—the simultaneous break with Freemasonry, the League of the Rights of Man, and the radical press—was risky but correct. It drove out Frossard and his co-thinkers while bringing in Monatte and Barbusse.
Monatte’s entry is treated as more than a personal episode: it signified that the party had broken down the wall of distrust separating it from the revolutionary syndicalist tradition. Barbusse embodied the indignant conscience of the war generation, and his entry proved that no spiritual avenue other than the Communist Party remains for what is honest and revolutionary in that generation. Trotsky concludes that the Ruhr crisis of January 1923, which immediately followed Frossard’s exit, proved the party stronger and more cohesive. The greatest difficulties lie ahead, but a real Communist Party now lives and fights in France.