EURO-COMMUNISM
25
circumstances in each of the European cou ntri es in which a Com–
munist party has something more than minimal existence? What
kind of a political culture does it operate in, does it refer back to, has
it to work with, in order to achieve some kind of influence? And if it
does become a highly significant party, if it does become the party
with control of the state, will it be under the control of the Soviet
Union? I would guess, and here I agree very much with Mr. Laqueur,
it would have to be a very unusual Communist party to be under the
control of the Soviet Union once it became the party of government,
if it could possibly avoid it. The rea l question is just what the
influence within Western Europe of Communist governments which
were both di ctatorial and na tiona listi c wi ll be. And which might
very well fear the overall influence of the Soviet Union more than
they fear the influence of the United States. The United States has
had plenty of experience at working with dictatorial nationalist
governments.
It
has on the whole thought them rather a good thing
in various parts of the world.
It
might well turn out that a nationalist
Communist government in Wes tern Europe would be just as drawn
to
the United States as a national government in South Korea,
Thailand, Vietnam, Spain, or Portugal.
William Phillips:
Well , I can ' t defend the Australians, but in defens e
of the Americans, I might say that we as ked a number of people of
different national origins and many could not come.
In
addition, I
might add that people were not invited on the basis of their national
origin. There were other considerations which led us to invite people
to come to this meeting. Now, who on this list would like to go next?
That is Arato.
Andrew Arala:
I am Hungarian. I would like to raise a few questions
of my own. First of all, we would have to ask whether it makes any
difference that at least two of these parties, and possibly the third, but
in any case th e Italian Party, is rea lly a mass party of the industrial
working class. I mean , I think it may make some difference, certainly
in terms of the histori ca l precedents, because the Eastern European
parties were not mass parties of the industria l working class.
The Czekoslovakian perhaps has come closest, but even that has
taken power in no way through being a mass party of the industrial
working class, but through the other well-known way. Now that is
my first ques tion , and I would like to ask what the political
consequences are, and I think that just to give a hint of an answer, I
would like to say that the politica l consequences are serious, because
the Soviet-backed model cannot , in any sense, represent the immedi-
