EURO-COMMUNISM
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issues about these parties which William touched upon. First, of
course, their degree of autonomy, real or claimed, from dependence
on the Soviet leadership. Second, the degree to which they are really
prepared to accept, not temporary participation in parliamentary
democracy, but actual participation, and electoral alternation. To
what ex tent have these parties really undertaken a revision of their
doctrines, such tha t they are prepared to approach a modern model
of democratic socia li sm? Third, the question of their internal
structure. To what ex tent have they really dev iated from democratic
centralism, that is, from a rigorous and vertica l organization with
party changes, changes in line, commands, tac;ti cs and so on, coming
down from a co-opted group at the top? At any rate, rather than deal
with these questions in general terms, let's look at the parties in
particular. The Spanish party, which got not quite ten percent of the
vote in the last elections, seems to be making an ideological turn
because of Carrillo's pronouncements, his assertion that the Soviet
Union is not a Socialist state, or is a failed model of socialism, the
fact that he was in Moscow the other day and was not allowed to
speak, the fact that the Soviet Union attempted to launch a counter–
party which fail ed miserably under the Republi can Communist
General Lister. Of course Carrillo and his party have a great deal
to
live down.
And the rol e of the Party in the Spanish Civi l War was at least
ambiguous.
It
mobilized for the war. It was able to point to the
Soviet Union as the one foreign power which ass isted the Republic.
On the other hand, it used its entrenchment in the army, the state
appara tus , for the persecution of its opponents, particularly its
opponents on the Left, like the Catalonian anarcho-syndicalist
movemenl. And its mode of dea ling with them in the wartime
situation was tyranni cal and totalitarian . That is a legacy of the
Spaniards. However, it should a lso be remembered that since about
1954 his predecessors in the leadership of the Party have sought a
peaceful , nonrevolutionary transition from the Franco regime, and
since then they have emphasized thal.
The French Communist party of course is older. It is more
firmly implanted.
It
sees itself as the heir not on ly of Leninism, but
of a certain tradition in French working-class socialist politics
known as
ouvrierism,
or working-class domina tion . It also enter–
tains Jacobin notions of the state and is therefore a centralizing
party.
It
has lilli e tol erance for some of the newer notions of
participatory democracy which have come up on the Catholic Left
