Weakened, the PCF still has 620 mayors in the country, several thousand local elected representatives, one group in the Assembly and another in the Senate.
Le Monde avec AFP
On December 25, 1920, the 18th th congress of the French Section of the Workers’ International (SFIO, Socialist Party) opened, in Tours, during which the majority of members decided to join the Communist International (Comintern), founded in Moscow by Lenin. The French Communist Party was born. One hundred years later, the PCF, which reached its peak after the Second World War, has shrunk over the decades despite a good local establishment.
After having nurtured the ranks of the resistance, the PCF was one of the first parties in France after the war (800,000 inserted at the end of 1946), when it joined the government of General de Gaulle in key positions (civil service, social security. ..).
Today, the elections follow one another and the Red Party hardly reaches 3% in the elections, as in the last European ones when its list won a small 2.5%, hardly pointing to the tenth place in the ranking of the running parties.
The fault of the workers who prefer to turn to the National Rally, some believe. The fault “with capitalism and the deindustrialisation of the country”, which “massacred the working world”, affirms Guillaume Roubaud-Quashie, historian and member of the PCF leadership. According to him, “abstentionism is such that it is difficult to speak of communicating vessels”.
“Revolutionary Party”
The PCF (which officially adopted this name only ‘in 1943, with the dissolution of the Communist International) was born from the split of the SFIO in Tours in December 1920, when the majority of the congressmen decided to join the III e International, created one year earlier in the wake of the October Revolution. The minorities, led by Leon Blum, opt for the preservation of “the old House”.
“Revolutionary Party”, as it continues to call itself, the PCF still believes in its plan: to destroy hated capitalism . But if it refuses any compromise with capitalism, unlike the social democracy to which the Socialists have ended up attached, the PCF does not get trapped in its utopia: on two occasions, it returns to the government, under the presidency by François Mitterrand, from 1981 to 1984, then with Lionel Jospin, from 1997 to 2002.
A few years earlier, in 1972, the Communists had succeeded in convincing reluctant socialists to sign a “common program with them of government “, which, contrary to what they hoped, ultimately benefited the rose party. Refounded by Mitterrand in 1971, the PS overtook the PCF for the first time in the legislative elections of 1978.
The PCF remains resolutely Stalinist with Maurice Thorez (secretary general from 1930 to 1964), the most emblematic figure in its history. Later devoted to Georges Marchais, a charismatic personality, who still praised in 1979 “the overall positive balance” of communism in the East, the PCF ended up abandoning the doctrine of “the dictatorship of the proletariat” (1976) and recognizing the Khrushchev report on Stalin’s crimes. “Twenty years too late,” lamented Robert Hue, successor to Georges Marchais.
50,000 members
And despite the social conquests of the Popular Front to which he greatly contributed, or those post-war with the creation of Social Security by Ambroise Croizat, the PCF never managed to win over a majority of voters.
“The PCF is doing well”, nevertheless analyzes political scientist Jean-Daniel Lévy. It “remains very present at the local level, where it is much better established than La France insoumise. Its identity endures and it is not in a catastrophic situation”, he adds.
Despite the loss of several strongholds in the last municipal elections (Saint-Denis in particular), the Communist Party still has 620 mayors in the country, several thousand local elected officials including a hundred departmental councilors, one group in the Assembly, another in the Senate and is at the head of a department, the Val-de-Marne.
He also shoots today its strength from the vitality of its activists (50,000 members “up to date”), to tow, stick posters, sell L’Humanité on weekends. “Its electoral base has shrunk like a grain of salt,” notes Roger Martelli, party historian, but the PCF remains “despite everything a popular party”, “unquestionably an established force” in the French political landscape.