Eurocommunism Close to Home

The French Communist Party (FCP) has just seen its Eurocommunist vision of an electoral victory by the "left" alliance crumble at the polls.

Closer to home the Socialist Unity Party inspired stopwork-rallies to return a Labour Government in '78 have fizzled into non-events — several have been cancelled.

Both events received some of the shoddiest "analytical comment" the media has presented for some time. The French elections were passed off as a "defeat for the left" and then dropped from the headlines. The failure of the Auckland Trades Council stopworks was used to "show" that workers were not interested in politics. Both analyses would appear to be superficially correct — but any investigation at all would show them to be virtually opposite to the reality of each event.

The basic problem for the media in each case was their own creation - the "red bogey". If a party is willing to call itself "communist" or "socialist" then the media's willing to treat it as such. It is just not in the interests of a media still committed to red baiting to concede that "communism in French colours" is nearer blue than red and that the SUP's vague aim of "social control" is probably less radical than the National Party Superannuation scheme.

The real stories behind the two events mentioned at the start of the article are quite different to the media's attempts. Essentially they are both stories of failure, but not of the so-called "left" or of attempts to interest workers in politics, but of the rotten policies pushed by the leaders of the FCP and SUP — policies which are similar in nearly all respects.

From Krushchev to Panmure

The FCP and the SUP are both part of the flotsam of revisionism that was set adrift by Krushchev and his followers when they attacked and defeated marxist politics within what was then the international communist movement in the late fifties and early sixties. Krushchev, using the great prestige of the Soviet Union and its hegemony over Eastern Europe, dictated a new line for the communist parties of the west. Preparation for violent revolution was condemned (as was preparation for violent counter-revolution) and the not so new theory of "peaceful transition to socialism" was substituted. The leaders of the FCP eagerly propagated this new line but within the Communist Party of New Zealand an extensive mass debate began. It ended in the total defeat of the Krushchev line and gradually the pro- Krushchev elements left the party to form the NZ Socialist Unity Party in 1966.

The new revisionist line of acheiving socialism through the ballot box has now had twenty years to prove itself. It has had no successes and has suffered several defeats. At the cost of over a million lives the Algerian people won their war of independence against France after the Soviet Union had refused to support them as they were not being peaceful. A more tragic defeat for the theory of peaceful transition was the disaster in Chile five years ago where a peaceful, disarmed Chilean working class saw an armed military topple the democratically elected government and institute a reign of terror. The official revisionist line is that the Chilean workers were not peaceful enough!

The new peaceful way has been turned by its adherents into a oft-used excuse to scab on the struggles of workers and oppressed peoples. Part of the peaceful road is "convincing" the bourgeoisie that they should also be peaceful — therefore all struggle against the bourgeoisie should be moderated in case a violent response is engendered.

The SUP and FCP have scabbed with the best of them. In 1968 the FCP did its best to sabotage and limit the student/worker uprising in Paris and elsewhere. Through the party-controlled trade union federation, the CGT, it fought against the spontaneous strikes and factory occupations and encouraged everyone to "go back to work".

In the last year the SUP leadership has managed to condemn shop workers who struck against the Shop Trading Hours Bill as "wasting their time", to undermine mass actions at the start of the anti-SIS Bill campaign (everywhere but Wellington where page 7 its support was minimal but still SUP union officials tried to limit action by refusing to call stopworks on the legislation when requested), to oppose and destroy chances of a full-scale harbour stoppage during the Pintado visit and to undermine the struggle against redundancies at Todd Motors by big talk backed by deliberate non-action.

Into the Fold

Both parties take a clear line on superpower contention. They support the Soviet Union. The only difference between the two is that the French occasionally criticise Soviet internal policy. However, both support to the hilt Soviet foreign policy. Last year, the SUP, while busy sabotaging action in Auckland against the SIS Legislation, simultaneously pushed the Stockholm Peace Appeal. The Appeal, drafted by the Soviet foreign office, praises detente and falsely claims that tensions are being relaxed in today's world. The French party joined with the SUP in supporting the Soviet- Cuban invasion of Angloa and remained mum as Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. Now that the Soviet Union is propping up Ethiopian fascism both parties are attempting to picture Mengistu's regime as "progressive". In the same way they portrayed the Somali regime as progressive while the Soviets were allowed to maintain base facilities at Berbera. When the Soviet advisers were kicked out the Somalis became "reactionary".

But the most blatant piece of pro- Sovietism is contained in a booklet recently published by the SUP. The booklet purports to contain the solution to the current economic crisis. The solution — increased trade with the Soviet Union. A solution so simple and direct that it defies the imagination - and reality. India has already tried this pipe-dream cure-all. Soviet trade only increased their difficulties. The Soviets were exporting some goods to India, under "co-operation" and "friendship" agreements, at 20-30% above world prices. Meanwhile a number of Indian imports to the Soviet Union were receiving prices 20% below world prices. No wonder the Soviets are getting their SUP pen-pushers to enthusiastically propose such a novel solution for New Zealand's economic ills!

With Credentials Like These...

Put in the wash of an even partly thorough investigation the FCP and SUP come out paler than the palest pink. While both can claim their base of support in the organised trade union movement there ends their association with working class politics. Both offer political programmes full of vague phrases and strategies of acheiving socialism that could have come straight from Alice in Wonderland. The practical activity of both is to consistently oppose mass struggles outside of the arena of Parliament and election campaigns and narrow everything down into a struggle to win votes — with the inevitable compromises to win over the middle voter that ensue.

"The Left Defeated"

If the FCP is not "left" then the "defeat of the left" view of the French election needs some reviewing.

Internally the FCP-Socialist Party Alliance offered some wage increases and the dubious prospect of nationalisation of some key industries. Externally they offered a new partner for the brotherhood of Soviet foreign policy.

Of these two differences they gave from the ruling coaltion the more significant is the prospect of support for Soviet foreign policy. The key issue facing France and the rest of western Europe is its likely use as a battlefield for the two superpowers to play out a third world war. In particular the military threat posed by the Soviet Union, and cloaked by calls to make detente irreversible", is increasing daily. It is imperative that western European governments see this danger and prepare their countries to meet it.

Looked at in this light the election of the FCP-FSP alliance would only have disarmed the French people's struggle against the threat of being embroiled in a war between the two superpowers and in particular of organising against the military threat posed by the Soviet Union. This is cause enough to seriously doubt that the "defeat for the left" was anything of the sort. Given the choice of a black cat and a white cat the french people have chosen one with a better attitude to hegemonism.

The Sup's Sick Strategy to Support Labour

While some employers argued that the failure of the Auckland stopworks stemmed from the workers unwillingness to become involved in politicking it was clearly not that simple. The Labour Party is now seen by many workers as little better than National and tens times less effective. This is a far more likely reason for low attendances at rallies designed to bolster support for Labour. Sure workers want to defeat the reactionary policies of the National Government but they don't want to do it by placing their eggs in the basket of a Labour Government which could turn out equally reactionary.

Reconsideration of the media view of the Auckland stopworks is necessarily more complex. It is tied up with the whole question of whether the only concrete way to correct the drift to fascism under a Natioanl Government is to elect a Labour Government in November. I disagree and plan to look at the question of supporting Labour and the Auckland stop-works (which showed workers aren't keen to support Labour) in a forthcoming article on this question.

Political Correspondent