All this weekend, the Communist Party is holding its congress in Marseilles. Barring a huge surprise, the national secretary, Fabien Roussel, should be re-elected. This is the 39ᵉ congress of the PCF, founded in 1920. Back to more than a century of existence of this communist party, one of the last in Europe.
The 39th Congress of the Communist Party is held throughout the weekend in Marseille. Barring a huge surprise, national secretary Fabien Roussel should be re-elected. An internal vote, at least in January, has already largely validated its orientation text. Decryption with the gaze of sociologist Jean Viard on a century of existence of this party.
franceinfo: What is the Communist Party and communism in France today, a century later?
John Viard: We are one of the last countries in Europe to have a communist party. It’s usually transformed by merging with democratic forces like in Italy, for example. Communism, that was the big moment, stemming from the labor movement, stemming from constructions of the social movement before, and after the war of 14, and then after, obviously carried by the Russian revolution of 1917, and then I was going to say, hidden by Stalinism to go back over the whole story.
Today, there were 800,000 votes for Mr. Roussel in the presidential election, a little over 2%, so somewhere, it’s a huge memory. At the same time, this week, something absolutely major happened, which is that for the first time, the CGT is not led by a member of the Communist Party, since Sophie Binet comes from the Socialist Party, even if it should no longer be there, and it has a tradition of the Unef. So it’s a manager who went through university. And the important event of this week is that the CGT has become a union that is no longer linked to the Communist Party, whereas historically, it was called “the transmission belt”. There was also the French women’s movement, and then there were the town halls.
The basis of communism were the municipalities, it was the workers’ movement on one side, the CGT, the French women’s movement, and there were also some in agriculture, there were relays. And then, on the other side, there were obviously the town halls. And basically, little by little, town halls remained, and then a few departments. Then they lost the departments. And then, they still have a few town halls. They are nibbling at them, often moreover by the socialists, because these are left-wing, popular town halls where the confrontation is rather between communists and socialists, sometimes LFI, it’s all that movement.
Afterwards, the problem with communism is that it’s a utopia to put everything in common, which is a very beautiful utopia. And then, in fact, it’s a tragedy, because as an economic model, it didn’t work, with situations of terrible violence, except, I was going to say in China. They have made the capitalist economy with a structuring of the private economy, alongside a policy, which is disconnected from it. It is a very particular model. But here it is, it remains the common. There are still people who are often very dedicated, very friendly. As a historical movement, I think it has somewhat finished its period.
Fabien Roussel’s orientation text, presented at the beginning of the year, is entitled “Communist ambition for new happy days”. And Fabien Roussel does not hesitate to make the value of work one of his cardinal points. And that differentiates it from other left-wing parties?
Yes, that is to say that the problem is that the Communist Party has always been established in companies, and in companies, we know that there are workers, managers, senior managers, technicians. And we know that production is an association of professions, structured by skills, hierarchy, etc. That’s their vision of work, whereas basically it’s essentially based on the world of teachers, a lot of people who are teachers. It’s not the world of the factory, it’s not at all the same relationship to work, it’s the opposition between work and free time (we can clearly see the discourse of some, not all of elsewhere, indeed on The right to laziness, which was the text of Paul Lafargue).
It’s not the same logic, and that’s where the value of “work” for the Communist Party has always been important. But behind their ideas, it is the value of industrial work, but it is also the recognition of the diversity of statuses. The Communist Party knows that there are bosses and that you have to negotiate with them. And LFI would tend to wonder if billionaires shouldn’t be eliminated, it’s not the best approach to social reality.