COMMUNISTS IN DEMOCRATIC CLOTHING BY DANIEL SELIGMAN, FORTUNE, MARCH 1976

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-01194A000100230001-0
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• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 7, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 1, 1976
• Content Type: REPORT

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25X1 A2Approved
Communists in Democratic Clothing by Daniel Seligman,
Fortune, March 1976
The attached article is an analysis of the current
phenomenon of communist parties endorsing democratic
principles and what this may mean to the United States,
the West and the Soviet Union. The author deals principally
with the communist parties of Italy and France whose partic-
ipation in government is a possibility. Seligman also
concerns himself with the parties of Spain and Japan whose
participation is more remote. The author concludes that
communist parties, in their present form, justify the
concern of those who want to keep them out of the govern-
ment, that they represent too great a risk. The article
is not meant for replay but rather to provide Station
personnel and covert action assets with a concise dis-
cussion of the ramifications of this development. (The
two previous articles in this series dealt with the CPSU
25th Congress.)
June 1976
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FINAL ARTICLE IN A SERIES
LOOMMSnusts 0
Some of the largest Communist parties in the
West say they believe in civil liberties, free elections,
and a multiparty system. Do they mean it?
may be focusing hard on a question that
once would have seemed very peculiar in-
deed. Can Communists be democrats?
Only a few years ago, the answer would
have been-no, obviously not. Today it
isn't obvious at all.
A number of Communist parties in the
advanced industrial countries now claim
to be democratic. They say that they are
committed to a multiparty system in
which civil liberties and cultural free-
dom would be guaranteed. They say that
they have no interest in bringing any-
thing like the Soviet version of Commu-
nism to the West, and they can, in fact,
point to numerous instances in which
they have criticized the Russians for acts
of repression.
Whether they mean what they say
would appear to be a matter of consider-
able significance. Communists talking
about democracy have serious prospects
of entering the governments of Italy and
France during the next couple of years,
and interesting longer-run prospects in
Spain (where the party is now out-
lawed) and Japan. If even one of these
four countries were
munists, the political map of the world
would surely be transformed in ways
that Americans could not ignore.
The nature of the transformation is
a matter of some controversy. Secretary
of State Henry A. Kissinger, who is
skeptical about the Communists' profes-
sion of democratic beliefs, has argued
that bringing their parties into govern-
Tent would undermine the free world's
unity and resolve. On the other hand,
those who believe that the "democratic"
Communists really mean it sometimes
by. Daniel Seligman
question whether the regimes of Eastern
Europe could survive the spectacle of
Communists entering a democratic gov-
ernment and later retiring from office
after being defeated in a free election.
It should be obvious that the desira-
bility of bringing Communists into gov-
ernment is an issue involving economics
as well as politics. In principle, at least,
they might turn out to be truly demo-
cratic, independent of the Russians, even
willing to support NATO and the Euro-
pean Community-and still be a disaster
for the West. It is most unclear what
would remain of the market system in
any country where "democratic" Com-
munists came to power. They are gen-
erally committed to preserve a mixture
of public and private enterprise, and
they are certainly not emphasizing plans
for any major nationalization of in-
dustry (indeed, the Italian Communists
insist, just like the British Tories, that
some industries now run by government
should. be denationalized). Still, their
strident and demogogic rhetoric about
the menace of multinational corpora-
Seventeen out of seventeen
It seems reasonable to ask whether
Communists talking about democracy
aren't simply engaged in a gigantic
hoax, hoping that the talk will bring
them to power but planning to revert
to their normal totalitarian practices
after achieving it. There is certainly a
prima facie case for regarding totali-
tarianism as the norm. Seventeen coun-
tries have gone Communist over the
years, from the Soviet Union in Novem-
There is another reason to be s -ep i
cal. Over the years, Communists hay
been flagrant liars. And their doetrin
has long proclaimed that any tactics ar
morally permissible in the war agains
the bourgeoisie.
Lenin was amazingly explicit abou
this. He denounced as "infantile" thos
party members who insisted on adherin
to principled revolutionary positions
and said that the true revolutionarie
were those willing "to resort to all sort
of stratagems, artifices, illegal method
to evasions and subterfuges. . ." Th
Communist parties now professing t
have been converted to democratic pri
ciples will not deny that they remai
Leninists. On this count alone, it woul
seem reasonable to ask questions abou
their conversion.
Camping with the Russians
But the most compelling reason f
skepticism lies elsewhere-in the ambi
uous relationship between the dem -
cratically oriented Communist parti
and the Soviet Union. While the part
leaders frequently criticize the Russian ,
reject their guidance on many issues
common concern, and generally dri
them crazy at international party co -
ferences (see "Communism's Crisis f
Authority," FORTUNE, February), t e
parties nevertheless insist on their u -
derlying solidarity with the Sovi t
Union, as members of "the sociali it
camp." When a professed democrat sa s
he belongs to a "camp" that admits t -
talitarians, it is natural to wonder abo it
the depth of his commitment o
democracy.
At the same time, it would be fooli h
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son why Communist parties must be to-
talitarian. After Nikita Khrushchev's
February, 1956, "secret speech," which
shattered forever the mystique of Stalin-
ism, the parties outside the Soviet sphere
were free to create their own versions of
Communism.
Their ideologies do not appear to rep-
resent an insuperable difficulty to the
creation of democratic versions. Over
the years, a sizable number of socialists
have interpreted Marxist ideas, and for
that matter Leninist ideas, in ways that
allow for political freedom. Right now,
Roy Medvedev, the dissident Soviet his-
torian, is arguing learnedly and cour-
ageously for a reform of Soviet Commu-
nism in which political democracy would
be based on Marxism-Leninism. (His
argument is presented in On Socialist
Democracy, the text of which was pub-
lished last year in the U.S.)
Furthermore, Communists would ap-
pear to have some powerful incentives
for moving toward democratic positions.
It has become fairly obvious in the last
few years that the most successful Com-
munist parties-those that have attract-
ed the most members and won the most
votes-are precisely those that have
moved the furthest away from Stalinism.
The Italian party, which was first and
most emphatic in proclaiming its com-
mitment to democracy, is also the largest
in the West, with 1.7 million members.
In regional elections last June, the party
won a third of the total vote; in electoral
support it is now generally considered
the equal of the Christian Democrats,
who have ruled Italy all through the post-
war years. The Communists' secretary-
general, Enrico Berlinguer, was voted
the "most trusted" of all Italian politi-
cians in a poll taken several months ago.
Meanwhile, the Communist parties
that sound as though they are still sell-
ing the Soviet version of Communism
(e.g., the U.S., Australian, and Danish
parties) tend to be small and isolated
sects. Thus there is a growing incentive
for Communists to behave like demo-
crats; and it seems reasonable to wonder
whether this behavior might not be
translated into a genuine commitment
to democracy.
The politics of ambiguity
Political analysts trying to judge how
the democratically oriented Communists
would actually behave in office have gen-
erally paid special attention to the Ital-
ian Communist party. To a considerable
extent, it is a model for the other "demo-
cratic" Communists. It has achieved
this status, not only because of its elec-
toral triumphs, but also because of a
kind of intellectual preeminence in the
Communist world.
The Italian party has a quite distinc-
tive political style. It is a mass party,
whose members are drawn from all
segments of Italian society; yet to a
remarkable extent it is a party dominat-
ed by intellectuals, and its postwar lead-
ers have generally been men of some
subtlety and imagination.
In several other European countries,
and especially France, Communist party
members tend to be concentrated' in the
working class and left-leaning intellec-
tuals have been only fellow travelers.
In Italy, the intellectuals are inside the
party and among its leaders. Perhaps
for this reason, the Italian party has
had special success in rationalizing, in-
deed cultivating, the ambiguities that
swirl around the idea of democratic
Communism.
To a degree, the ambiguities reflect
the fact that the party pursues some-
what conflicting objectives. Professor
Donald L. M. Blackmer, a political sci-
entist at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and a specialist in Italian
Communism, has observed that three
objectives have been paramount in the
postwar era: preserving the unity of
the party, preserving its ties with other
groups in Italian politics, and preserv-
ing a measure of "solidarity" with the
Soviet Union. But none of these objec-
tives can be pursued wholeheartedly be-
cause each of them conflicts with the
other two. Solidarity with the Russians,
which makes it harder for Italian Com-
munists to form alliances with other
parties, has certainly lessened in recent
years. At the same time, any forthright
rejection of solidarity-e.g., sustained
attacks on the Soviet Union by Italian
party leaders-would upset many mem-
bers and threaten party unity.
The Berlinguer leadership is adept at
developing formulations that offer some-
thing to both the democrats and the
totalitarians. For example, when the
dissident Soviet physicist Andrei Sak-
harov was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize last fall, and was not allowed to
leave the country to accept it, the party
daily l'Unitd expressed its regret. But
the paper also held that he should not
have got the prize in the first place and
expressed "dissatisfaction with many
of the positions that Sakharov sustains."
Is Zionism a form of racism? Cer-
tainly not, said l'Unitd, at a time when
the Soviet Union was supporting this
proposition in the United Nations. How-
ever, the paper coupled this declaration
with a reminder to its readers that Zion-
ism was a "reactionary ideology which
is used by imperialism."
Mapping the Italian road
It is hard to put a date on the Italian
party's adoption of a democratic line.
Party boss Palmiro Togliatti appeared
to have an interest in moving toward
some such line soon after he returned
from exile in 1944. His speeches
throughout the late 1940's emphasized
the need for democracy as well as social-
ism and sometimes made the point that
the "Italian road to socialism" would be
different from the Soviet road.
However, it seems fair to say that the
party did not seriously confront the is-
sue of Stalinism, or develop its views on
democracy, until after Khrushchev's
1956 secret speech. The intellectuals at
the head of the party, including Togliatti
himself, seem to have been genuinely
shattered by the denunciation of Stalin
(although there was surely an element
of hypocrisy in their universal failure to
admit to any prior suspicion that he ever
abridged the civil rights of his com-
patriots). Some leaders responded by
denouncing Khrushchev and defending
Stalin against the charges; others ac-
cepted the charges and demanded that
the party face facts.
Togliatti responded to the new tensions
in the party characteristically--by
equivocating. His position was a mar-
vel of ambiguity. In defining the party's
new relationship to the Russians, he
elaborated the idea of "polycentrism,"
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i.e., the idea that there was no longer
any one center of authority for interna-
tional Communism. But then, during the
prolonged argument about the Soviet in-
tervention in Hungary, he generally sup-
ported the Soviet line. At the party's
Eighth Congress, in December, 1956, he
backed a resolution indicating that Ital-
ian Communists believed in the existing
multiparty political system. But the dis-
cussion that accompanied this resolu-
tion made it clear that opposition parties
were still deemed to be unnecessary after
socialism had been attained.
Two external events in the early 1960's
spurred. the party to put the issue of
democracy on the agenda again. One was
the Twenty-second Congress of the So-
viet party in 1961, at which Khrushchev
renewed his attack on Stalin. Togliatti
tried to argue that the attack was an
internal Soviet affair, but his own cen-
tral committee insisted that it had impli-
cations for the Italian party too.
The debate in the committee, which
was impassioned, and which soon spread
throughout the entire party, focused on
the fact that Stalin had suppressed dis-
sent within the Soviet party; it was this
suppression, many Italian Communists
contended, that had made possible his
crimes. The implication drawn by the
Italians was that there should be a great-
er right of dissent within their own
party. It appears that the rights of non-
Communists in a socialist society did-not
particularly interest the participants in
this debate. Khrushchev had not dwelt
upon Stalin's behavior toward ordinary
citizens, but only his persecution of
party members; and the Italian Commu-
nists seemed to agree with Khrushchev's
definition of the problem.
munists and Socialists had generally
been allied in opposition. But as these
alliances broke down, the Christian
Democrats increasingly had to turn left,
to the Italian Socialists and Social
Democrats, for help in forming govern-
ments at both the local and national
levels. This left the Communists con-
cerned about being isolated-and the
concern led them to place a special em-
phasis on their ties to the Socialists.
All of which represented a pressure
on the party to adopt a more democratic
look. Beginning soon after the secret
speech, which had a profound impact on
the Socialists too, leaders of that party
began to taunt the Communists for their
lack of credibility in claiming to be
democrats. Socialist leader Pietro Nenni
called for a "recognition of the inalien-
able and permanent value of democracy
and liberty, without which even a revo-
lution that transforms capitalist prop-
erty into state or communal property
results in reestablishing, in different
forms, oppression and even exploitation
of the workers."
Nenni went on to make another point:
that even if the Communists accepted
all this in principle, it would still be dif-
ficult for the Socialist party to believe
in their sincerity so long as they con-
tinued to insist on their essential soli-
darity with the Soviet Union. The Com-
munists responded to these criticisms,
not by breaking decisively with the Rus-
sians, but by finding more and more
occasions for disagreeing with them and
for proclaiming their own democratic
intentions.
The birth of a testament
One dramatic opportunity to do both
occurred at the time of Togliatti's death,
in the summer of 1964. Togliatti had
gone to Moscow in August. He hoped to
talk Khrushchev out of the world con-
ference of Communist parties that the
Russians, seeking to reassert their au-
thority over the world movement, were
then trying to organize. As Italian Com-
munists tell the story, Togliatti was
stood up by Khrushchev, who left word
that he would be touring Siberia with
Lord Thomson, the British publisher.
While awaiting his audience with the
Soviet leader, Togliatti decided to go
self-a document that would spell out
the Italian party's views on the world
conference and other matters, including
the party's relationship with the Rus-
sians. He is said to have written the
4,500-word paper at one sitting. Then,
while it was being typed, he and his
wife went to visit a nearby youth cen-
ter. While they were there, he suffered
a massive stroke.
When news of his stroke reached the
Italian party, his deputy, Luigi Longo,
hastened to Yalta. Longo presented Tog-
liatti's paper to the Soviet leaders. He
did not, however, tell them that he plan-
ned to have it published if the author
should die (as he did a few days later).
This omission doubtless spared Longo
some unpleasantness. For Togliatti's
"testament," as the document is now
called, proved to be a sizable annoyance
to the Russians-an annoyance presum-
ably magnified by the fact that, before
they had learned it would be published,
they had announced to the world that
the Soviet town of Stavropol, on the
Volga, was to be renamed Togliatti.
Perhaps the most infuriating passage
of all, from Khrushchev's point of view,
was one denouncing the lack of freedom
in the Soviet Union. Wrote Togliatti :
"The problem that most demands our
attention today, one affecting the Soviet
Union as much as the other socialist
countries, is especially that of overcom-
ing the regime of restrictions and sup-
pressions of democratic freedoms which
was introduced by Stalin." The memo-
randum then noted that there appeared
to he a strange "resistance" in the So-
viet party to "the Leninist norms" that,
Togliatti said, had once guaranteed "a
wide liberty of expression and debate
on culture and art, as well as in the
political field."
Thus the Soviet leaders, who were
already being denounced by the Chinese
for trying to restore capitalism, were
now getting it from the Italians for
abolishing freedom. Much of the com-
ment on the "testament" in Italy indi-
cates that it has been remarkably effec-
tive in persuading non-Communists that
the party stands for democracy.
Everyone supports the line
However, the wave of discussion finally
subsided with the Italian party's consti-
tution unchanged. It had always allowed
in principle for dissent, but the rules had
also required party members to support
the party line after all the discussion
was over. This requirement remained.
Another event that forced the party to
rethink its views on democracy was a
development in Italian politics often re-
ferred to as "the opening to the left."
Until the early 1960's, Italy had been
ruled by the Christian Democrats in
An urge to compromise
In the last few years, all discussion of
alliance with various liberal and con- When he got there, he also decided to Communist party has had a new frame-
servative par4?r ygovEMr,PiI_eg$fh2000{,N02gkiqRRM~ $IRA tQ00I 230001-0
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work. In 1973, under the prodding of
Berlinguer, who had become secretary-
general the previous year, the party
revised its political strategy. The strat-
egy of alliance with the Socialists had
been appropriate to an era in which the
Communists were part of the opposi-
tion. But now, Berlinguer made plain,
the party was strong enough to bid
for a share of power. He proposed a
great "historic compromise" in which
the Communists would govern together
with the Christian Democrats (and pos-
sibly the Socialists as well). The two
parties by themselves would presumably
have about 70 percent of the vote behind
them and any cabinet they formed would
be something akin to a government of
national unity.
The Christian Democrats have thus
far turned a deaf ear to the historic
compromise, but the Communists appear
certain that its time will come. In a
period of boundless economic troubles,
they believe, their party's rising elec-
toral strength, and their iron grip on
Italy's labor unions, will ultimately
make it impossible for the Christian
Democrats to govern without them.
They like our capital
In order to make the proposition more
salable, they have worked in a variety of
ways to emphasize their moderation and
responsibility. Eugenio Peggio, who
often speaks for the party on economic
issues, says that the Communists "do
not have any prejudice against foreign
capital, and in particular American
capital." In his office, where he sits
beneath a portrait of Lenin, Peggio
cheerfully proclaims that what is need-
ed is more government aid to private
enterprise, especially small and medium-
sized companies.
In addition, the Italian Communists
have signed a number of formal declara-
tions with the Communist parties of
other West European countries commit-
ting them all to democratic principles. A
declaration signed by Berlinguer and
Spanish Communist leader Santiago Car-
rillo last July proclaimed: "Socialism
can only arise in our countries through
the development and full achievement of
democracy. This has at its base the af-
firmation of the values of personal and
collective freedom and the guarantee of
the principles of the separation between
church and state, of freedom of speech,
of the plurality of parties and the open
dialogue between them, of the liberty of
expression in culture, in art, and in
science."
Clinging to contradictions
Do the Italian Communists mean it?
It is hard to answer the question flatly;
there is some evidence, at least, to sug-
gest that they do not always know their
own minds. Some years back, Togliatti
complained about the damage done to
the party by something called doppiezza.
The word is sometimes translated as
"duplicity," and, indeed, critics of the
party often reached for the word in the
course of arguing that Communists say
one thing but mean another. However,
Togliatti was referring to a somewhat
different mental process--one that might
be translated as "double-think."
The idea behind this usage is that
many people seem to be perfectly capable
of holding beliefs that are not logically
compatible with one another. For ex-
ample, they might believe (a) that so-
cialism means freedom, (b) that the
Soviet Union is a socialist society, and
;c) that the Soviet Union is a repressive
society. Many Italian Communists do in
fact appear to believe all three of these
propositions.
Intellectually active Communists .tend
to be pretty adept at this sort of thing.
To begin with, dialectical materialism,
the philosophy elaborated by Marx and
.Engels, lays great stress on the crea-
tive potential of clashing ideas. The di-
Aeetical process, in which the clash of
thesis and antithesis leads to the "high-
er truth" of synthesis, provides a model
of reality that sometimes seems to jus-
tify the holding of contradictory ideas.
Togliatti was surely right in suggest-
ing that doppiezza was bad for the party.
Yet the fact is that the roots of the prob-
lem go back to his own policies--to the
politics of ambiguity that he embraced
in the years after Stalin's death. And
the problem is far from solved today. In-
deed, the word that critics of the party
reach for today is ambiguity. And their
principal exhibit, today as in Togliatti's
time, is the party's ambiguous relation-
ship with the Soviet Union.
How can one possibly accept the demo-
cratic professions of those who volun-
tarily ally themselves with the rulers of
Martino, who heads the Socialist party,
is as insistent today in demanding an
answer as Nenni was in the late 1950's.
And Luigi Preti, a prominent member
of the Social Democratic party, has ar-
gued the point at length in a recently
published volume assailing the idea of
the historic compromise. Said Preti:
"They must choose and have the cour-
age to make a break. If they do not, they
will remain the prisoners of irrationality
and it will be impossible to inspire con-
fidence and trust. They cannot claim
credibility."
The importance of traditions
A somewhat similar point has been
made by Antonio Giolitti, a former Com-
munist who is now a prominent Socialist
member of Parliament. Giolitti, the
grandson of a pre-World War I pre-
mier, says that he does not doubt Ber-
linguer's own sincerity when he talks
about democracy. But Leninist patterns
of thought are so deeply ingrained in
the political behavior of many Commu-
nists that it would be imprudent to trust
them, he fears.
"I think of this hypothesis," said Gio-
litti recently. "They form a government.
They take power. There is much debate
and uncertainty over what they will do.
Businessmen begin to send their capital
abroad. Other parties demonstrate
against the Communists and perhaps
there is some violence on both sides.
What will the Communists do in this
situation? I am not sure-but I worry
that their instinct will be to limit the
freedom of others and to do anything
that will enable them to avoid surren-
dering power. The other Communist
parties will tell them: don't weaken, his-
tory is on our side. It is in this context
that their Bolshevik traditions would
make a difference. That is why they must
repudiate those traditions."
Some critics of the Italian Commu-
nist party believe that its commitment
to democracy is suspect on still another
count. Leopold Labedz, editor of the
London-based quarterly Survey, which
runs scholarly articles about Commu-
nism, believes that the commitment does
not square with the party's internal ar-
rangements. The Italian party-and, it
would appear, every other Communist
party in the world-.believes in "demo-
cratic centralism." In principle, this doc-
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discuss all questions confronting the
party and to elect delegates to the pol-
icymaking conventions. Once policy is
set, however, "democratic centralism"
requires all members to support it in
every detail; there can be no deviations,
no factions, no journals expressing dis-
sident ideas. The penalty for factional-
ism is expulsion from the party.
This is all quite different, it will be
observed, from the tradition of demo-
cratic socialist (and, for that matter,
conservative) parties, in which the
standard assumption is that every mem-
ber will have the right to maintain his
beliefs and to argue them indefinitely.
The British Labor party, for example,
has a left-wing faction and a right-wing
faction, and the party usually splits
along various other lines any time it is
presented with a complex new issue like,
say, British membership in the Euro-
pean Community.
The Italian Communists, on the other
hand, routinely expel their own dissi-
dents, and there is no doubt that the
threat of expulsion works to inhibit free
speech within the party. Serious debate
takes place only when the leadership it-
self is divided (which, of course, it has
sometimes been).
traditions and political styles of the two
are quite dissimilar. The French party
was. much slower to shake off the heri-
tage of Stalinism and it is still more
rigid and dogmatic in its approach to
current issues. It is what students of
Communism call a "triumphalist" party,
i.e., the tone of voice of its press and
leadership convey the impression of an
infallible party marching from
smashing triumph to another.
Three months ago, party leader
Georges Marchais had the misfortune,
while speaking on French television, to
commit this egregious slip of the tongue:
"We would never accept the idea of de-
cisions affecting the French people being
made anywhere but in Moscow." With
an embarrassed smile, he immediately
corrected that to "in Paris." Since every
word uttered by the leader in public is
dutifully reprinted in the party's daily
L'Humanite, some readers of that paper
must have waited with special curiosity
to see what treatment would be accorded
the slip. But, typically, the paper refused
to acknowledge the slip; it printed a
"transcript" in which the sentence
simply ended with "anywhere but in
Paris."
The case for an overhaul
Why is it monolithic? Despite its traditions, the French
In practice, as the history of Commu- party too has been under increasing
nism has repeatedly demonstrated, pressure to take a democratic line. The
"democratic centralism" is a remarkably party has been slipping in by-elections
effective means of controlling the votes and in the polls.-, it is now thought to
and ideas of the rank and file. Very few command less than 20 percent of the
heads of Communist parties, and none French vote. The Communists are no
in Italy, have been voted out of their longer the senior partner in the "union
positions, and when the leadership itself of the left"-their rather uneasy alliance
is united, it seems able to impose almost with the Socialist party led by Francois
any ideas on the rank and file. Berlinguer Mitterrand (now thought to have 30
had very little trouble, for example, in percent of the vote). The spectacle of an
selling 1.7 million members on the idea Italian Communist party pushing a dem-
of the historic compromise .i.e., on an ocratic line and growing steadily strong-
alliance. with their traditional enemy the er, while the French Communists clung
Christian Democrats. All of which is to their Stalinist past and grew weaker,
why a party governed by the rules of provided a rather convincing case for
"democ
ti
"
ra
c centralism
doesn't really an overhaul in France.
look very democratic to critics like Leo- It would appear that the decision for
gold Labedz. "If they really are con- an overhaul was made sometime last fall.
verted to democracy," he asks, "why do In November, Marchais joined with Der-
they need this monolithic party? If they linguer in issuing a declaration of prin-
really believe in freedom for ideas, why ciples that committed both to a vigorous
do they begin by suppressing ideas in- defense of democracy. The declaration,
side their own party?" which waia in cr,mn --..,,c., __,_---
geois democratic revolutions . . . should
be guaranteed and furthered."
It then specified what was involved in
this freedom: "liberty of thought and
expression, of press, of meeting and as-
sociation, the right to demonstrate, to
travel in and out of the country, the in-
violability of private life, religious free-
dom, total freedom to express diverse
ideologies and philosophical, cultural,
and artistic opinion. The French and
Italian Communist parties declare them-
selves in favor of the plurality of politi-
cal parties--including the right of op-
position parties to exist and to act, the
free formation of majorities and minor-
ities, and the possibility of democratic
alternation ..."
No return ticket
The reference to alternation (t'alter-
nanee) was of special interest to many
French voters. At the time the union of
the left was originally formed, in 1972,
Mitterrand had demanded that the
French Communists agree to this con-
cept, i.e., that they explicitly acknowl-
edge the possibility of their being voted
out of office after they got in. The Com-
munists tried to argue that the issue was
quite irrelevant: it was impossible to
imagine the French people turning
against socialism once they had attained
it, just as it was inconceivable that the
people would ever have overthrown the
original revolution and brought back
the ancien, regime. For several months,
late in 1972, the Communists maintained
grimly that there would be "no return
ticket." Mitterrand stuck to his guns,
however, and eventually they did com-
mit themselves to the concept of l'alter-
nance. The sequence of events did not
exactly inspire confidence in the Com-
munists' dedication to their democratic
principles.
And, of course, the party remains to-
tally committed to "democratic central-
ism" and the suppression of heresy in its
ranks. Its ability to turn on a 10-cen-
time coin, as several hundred thousand
French Communists are doing right
now, is astonishing. At the party's
Twenty-second Congress, held in Paris
last month, there was no real dissent
from the new line, which features ex-
tensive criticism
f S
i
o
ov
et repression,
The electoral successes of the Italian er than the one issued jointly by the Ital- rejection of the "dictatorship of the pro-
Communists have had a profound effect ian and Spanish parties lrei t letariat" acrd a special emphasis on re
on the French ~,~ ~pet