First Published: People’s Tribune, Vol. 3, No. 7, March 15, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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At their 22nd Party Congress, the Communist Party of France formally renounced the slogan of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and took up instead the slogan of “a democratic road to socialism.” In place of the dictatorship of the proletariat, French Party leader Georges Marchais called for a unity of the working class with the “salaried middle class” into a “union of the people of France.”
In the February 12, 1976 edition of the Daily World, the revisionists of the CPUSA published a “Message to the French CP” which was delivered at the French Party Congress by Carl Winter, editor of the Daily World and member of the Political Bureau of the CPUSA. In his address, Mr. Winter made no mention of the abandoning of Marxism-Leninism by the French Party. He made no mention of the renegade revisionism of Georges Marchais. Instead, the Political Bureau of the CPUSA hailed the French Congress with warm fraternal greetings. “We are here united,” declared Winter, “in a world-wide fraternity devoted to a free and happy future for all mankind. Our unity in this struggle, and the justice of our cause will ensure our success.”
As part of his speech, Winter also read a message from Henry Winston and Gus Hall, National Chairman and General Secretary of the CPUSA. Hall and Winston stated, “In the bitter but victorious struggle against nazi fascism, the French Communists rejected any and all revisionist theories and demonstrated to the masses the leadership qualities of a Leninist Party. We gratefully recall the help given our Party by the venerated Communist leader, Jacques Duclos, whose famous 1945 article in Cahiers du Communisme contributed to the restoration of Marxism-Leninism as our guiding principles”!!
The article by Duclos was a sharp and principled criticism of the American party, which had been dissolved in favor of a “political association” by revisionist General Secretary Earl Browder, who claimed there was no longer a need for a Communist Party in the United States. Duclos raised this criticism of the CPUSA, condemned Browder’s revisionism and demonstrated that the burning need was not to dissolve but rather to strengthen the Communist Party. This criticism brought the struggle out into the open and was instrumental in the repudiation of Browder and the reconstitution of the CPUSA.
How does the CPUSA pay its debts? By patting revisionist Georges Marchais on the back and helping the French CP down the road to bourgeois parliamentarism! The CPUSA’s message to the French Congress closes, “Long live the unity of the world communist movement!”
We must take note that there is no unity within the world communist movement. The parties of Western Europe have degenerated while the struggle between the revisionists in the Soviet Union and China have fractured the socialist camp. We ask the CPUSA, what unity? Unity based upon what? Indeed, Messrs. Winston and Hall, you can only be referring to the unity of revisionism.
Marx wrote in a letter to Wedemeyer, dated March 5, 1852, “What I did that was new was to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production; 2) that the class struggle ’necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society . . .” To which Lenin, in The State and Revolution, added, “only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” To Georges Marchais, who declares the proletarian dictatorship “outdated” we reply with Lenin, “the transition from capitalism to Communism certainly cannot but yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
We reject the position of the French CP as anti-Marxist and condemn the CPUSA for their complicity. An international communist unity is possible only through unswerving support of Marxism-Leninism, of socialism and its necessary political expression–the dictatorship of the proletariat. We call for the international unity of a world communist movement based upon that and that alone–upon the science of Marxism-Leninism and the defense of socialism!