EURO-COMMUNISM
27
Schoo l. And I forgot to menti on th a t th e lady silting in front of you ,
Bruce Mil ler,
to
the left , is It a li an . And I hope a t some po int tha t the
two Ita li an fri ends here will have a chance
to
ta lk . Di ck H oward .
Ri chard Howard teaches phil osoph y a t Stony Brook.
R ichard H oward:
Wha t str ikes me a bout the Euro-communism move–
ment is Ih at, first of a ll , its birth is silUa ted in 1968. Tha t is
to
say,
May 1968 in France, the so-ca ll ed "Creeping May" in Italy, and
Czekoslova ki a.
It
seems to me th a t what Eu ro-communi sm repre–
sents in th e fir st in stance is a react ion
to
the innovati ons that May
represented. T ha t in a certa in sense May was a rebirth of a sphere of
po liti ca l act ivity no longer ca ught within the bounds o f either
parli ament ar ian o r traditi ona l pa rt y fo rms. And one would have to
ask
10
what degree Eu ro-communi sm is a conscious a ttempt on the
part of the Socia li st and or Communi st parti es
to
recoup the
energies th a t were bo rn o r manifested o r that recogni zed th emselves
for the first time in May, o r to wha t extent those energies will be able
to go beyond those pa rty fo rms. No rman Birnbaum mentioned the
name of Paul Laurent as some sort o f op pos itiona l person. Laurent
has recentl y made proud statement s about the Fren ch P.e. now
hav in g gone beyond six hun d red thousand members, pushing
towards th e mi
II
ion mark.
Is it the case tha t he expects thi s to be some sort o f
debordemen t,
to be some son of go in g beyond the iron di scipline of the Pa rty?
Coul d it be th a t th e recent dec isions on the pa rt of the French
Communi st pa rt y were an a llemp t by one facti on of the Pan y to
recoup it s control over th e Pa rty form?
Wh a t in fact is go ing on ? Is th ere some sort of transforma ti on of
the logic of capita lism th a t we need to dea l with ?
It
seems that is
precisel y the case. T he po litica l theory o f the Euro-Communi st
movement s. mos t recentl y arti cul a ted in a book by Lucien Sevre and
severa l o th ers on th e theory of the sta te, seems to adopt a sort of sta–
mo-cap model, sta te-monopo ly-ca pi ta lism , a part icul ar image of a
stale as somehow independent from the economi c situa ti o n and
opera tin g in the name of, o r in favor of, capita li sm , thi s pani cul ar
independence ma king for the poss ibility of a democra ti c fo rce
intervenin g, takin g contro l of tha i sta te and somehow using it fo r the
good ca use instead of for the ev il ca use. We have
to
as k whether tha t
theory makes an y sense. I think it ma kes very little sense. But if it
doe become th e theory o f th ese pani es, why is tha t the case? Here I
aga in go back to Ara to's ques ti ons a bout the socia l forma ti ons of the
Eas tern Eu ropean countri es and th eir relevance to the West.
If
those
