Eurocommunists: Waiting in the wings
Edward Mortimer
Whatever happened to 'Eurocommunism'? 1 had better declare an interest in this question, as co-author and co-editbr of a i book* on the subject, which for good or ill s rather less topical, now that it is at last about to be published, than it was when we decided to write it two and a half years ago. The draughty halls of Edinburgh University, the sylvan avenues of Ditchley Park, even the subterranean meeting-rooms of Chatham House no longer echo as they once did with seminrs and discussions about what Eurocommunism is, and Whether it exists. The airwaves no longer resound with the solemn warnings of the Three Doctors (Kissinger, Soares, Owen) about the dangers of allowing this iiisichous term to lull us into a sense of false security, into supposing that Communists were or could be other than they had always been. Since March last year neither the French .nor the Italian Communist Party any longer look as though they are marching inexorably towards power, while even before that It had become obvious that the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) would not have !nything like a dominant role in posttrance Spain. In the election of that month the French left failed to win its widely Pected majority. A few days earlier, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) had forMany entered the parliamentary majority, but. at the same moment Aldo Moro, the Main architect of that majority on the Christian Democrat side, was kidnapped by ieft-vving terrorists. So began a swing to the Eurocommunism, Myth or Reality? t:dited by Paolo Fib o della Torre, Edward £1.95) Mortimer and Jonathan Story (Penguin right in public opinion which has affected all the major countries of Western Europe.
If 'Eurocommunise parties are not about to get into power, it matters little to the establishment on either side of the Atlantic what Eurocommunism is or whether iv exists. But does Eurocommunism in fact cease to exist when there is no one in the quad to hold seminars on it? In a sense, yes. For Eurocommunism is not an autonomous phenomenon. It is a response to external circumstances. In the mid-Seventies almost all West European countries were seeking to confront the economic crisis by policies of concertation and consensus. The guiding idea was that the crisis could be solved by obtaining the consent of the working class to wage restraint in return for a role in the shaping of general policy, through the participation of its representatives in government. In the Latin European countries, where for historical reasons the largest labour organisations are Communist-led, this implied integrating the Communist parties ?nth the political system. Eurocommunism attracted attention mainly because it seemed to provide a way round the ideological obstacles to such integration. The Communist leaders developed Eurocommunism in response to a demand, which in some cases was only implicit and in others quite explicit, from non-Communists who needed their co-operation.
A degree of integration was achieved, Varying from country to country. But several things have prevented the process from reaching its logical conclusion. One was the incomprehension and hostility which it encountered in America and West Germany — countries where the problem does not arise in the same form but whose economic and political influence is such, particularly in Italy, that their support was virtually essential if the experiment were to go ahead. Another was the inconclusive or mediocre result of consensus policies on a practical level, and the consequent disillusionment of the economic elite with trade unions and their leaders as political partners, while on the ideological level Keynesian theory has been routed by monetarism. Perhaps most important of all has been the general deterioration of the international climate, both political and economic, since the plateau of the midSeventies — when it seemed that the Western world could be stabilised on the basis of détente with the Soviet Union and re-cycled petro-dollars.
The international climate is now veering back towards cold war and class war. These are not healthy conditions for Eurocommunism, a plant that has grown in the balmy summer of détente. If capitalists are disillusioned with the inability of trade unions to control their members, many workers are disillusioned with the inability of their leaders to secure tangible advantages, whether political or social, in return for their support of conservative economic policies. Thus, both in Italy and in Spain, the Communist parties are finding it harder and harder to reconcile their advocacy of national unity and inter-party co-operation with the resentment of their supporters at worsening economic conditions, which are naturally blamed on the parties at present in power. Interestingly, the French Communist Party (PCF), by most definitions the least Eurocommunist of the three, is also the one that seems least embarrassed by the present conjoncture. Its decision in 1977 to break the alliance with the Socialist Party rather than play second fiddle, which seemed almost inexplicable at the time, now looks remarkably lucid. Who can doubt that, if the French Socialists were in power now, they would be trying desperately to stay there by applying Healey-type policies, in which the Communists would be assigned the ungrateful role of Jones and Scanlon? As it is, the PCF is having considerable success in its preferred role, that of the 'real', tough opposition, the sole defender of the workers against the vicious onslaught on their jobs organised by a government which has sold France out to a supranational Europe dominated by German and American capitalism, and so on. It is not yet certain that the PCF will recover its position as the leading party on the left, but its chances of doing so now appear good.
It would be too simple to say, however, that this (purely relative) success had been achieved at the price of abandoning Eurocommunism. It is true that the PCF's version has been more aptly termed 'Gallocommunism' by one of its critics, in view of its fierce hostility both to the further integration of the European Community and to its enlargement — policies favoured by the Italian and Spanish Communist parties. But such as it was, the PCF's 'Eurocommunism' has not been abandoned. It has simply been frozen at roughly the point it had reached by 1977. Much the same is true of the Italians and the Spanish; and this has served to emphasise both the incompleteness and ambiguity of Eurocommunism as it had developed by that time, and the lack of synchronisation in its development between the three main Eurocommunist parties. For the time being parties are in power, and policies in vogue, which leave little role for Eurocommunism; and Eurocommun ists, in common with the rest of the left, seem unable to offer a convincing alternative. But the world economic climate may prove no more favourable to right-wing experiments than to left-wing ones. In a year or two fashion may swing back to consensus and managed economies. If Eurocommunists can hold their parties together until then, they may again become the darlings of the conference circuit and the subject of high level policy reviews.
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