Francois Billou, member of the Politburo of the PCF

For French Communists, 1970 was marked by two inextricably linked anniversaries - the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth and the 50th anniversary of the creation of the French Communist Party. Jacques Duclos, opening the 19th Congress of the PCF on February 4, 1970, said: "Just as we cannot honor the bright memory of Lenin without emphasizing the role he played in the founding of our party, so we cannot celebrate the 50th anniversary of our party without saying all that we owe to Lenin." The influence of V. I. Lenin, the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, which he led and directed, and the proletarian internationalism that he taught us and put into practice, contributed to a decisive degree to the fact that the working-class movement of our country gained faith in its own strength and consciousness of its historical mission.

"We will destroy the whole world of violence to the ground, and then we will build our own, we will build a new world, "the International declared. The beginning of this process was laid on November 7, 1917. Socialism has ceased to be only a theory, it has become an all-conquering reality. Imperialism plunged the peoples into the bloodbath, devastation, and filth of the First World War. The workers ' power, born of the October Revolution, brought Russia out of this hell. It saved Russia from the fate prepared for it by its own exploiters: from a national catastrophe and enslavement by foreign capital.

The first victorious socialist revolution left an indelible imprint on the struggle of the working people of France: the Russian revolutionaries successfully implemented the principles that the Second International (and above all the parties of France and Germany) rejected just when they should have been put into effect. The struggle for peace and national independence, proletarian internationalism, the seizure of State power for the construction of socialism - all this has ceased to be a distant dream. It was necessary to learn how to organize a victorious revolution, to give the French working people a strong party, which, like the party forged by V. I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, would be able to ensure the realization of the working class ' mission of liberation. The French Communist Party, as Maurice Thorez wrote, "was born in the struggle against war when, at the Congress of Tours in 1920, the delegates energetically expressed their will not to allow a repeat of the drama that destroyed the Second International. The party grew up in the struggle against the occupation of the Ruhr (1923), against the predatory colonial wars in Morocco and Syria (1925)"1 .

1 M. Torez. Son of the People, Moscow, 1960, p. 118.

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The First World War made obvious the inability of the old-style socialist parties to represent the interests of the working people and to defend the cause of labor and peace. Since the end of 1918, the solidarity of French workers with the Russian proletariat has found expression, in particular, in the unrest among the expeditionary corps in the Ukraine, in the uprising on ships sent to the Black Sea, as well as in demonstrations and strikes in France. French workers and peasants condemned and rejected reformism. Their desire to put an end to reformist methods determined the true meaning of the course of work and decisions of the Congress of Tours. As a result of the vigorous campaign launched by Marcel Cashin on his return from the Second Congress of the Communist International, after a heated debate that engulfed the entire Socialist Party, the overwhelming majority of participants in the Congress of Tours - 3208 seats against 1082 - voted in favor of joining the Third International. The manifesto adopted in the Tour declared: "Let our party be strong and disciplined... Let it be worthy of its past, worthy of Babeuf, worthy of the participants in the June revolution of 1848, worthy of the Paris Commune, worthy of Jaures, worthy of the glorious future that opens before us! " 2
Bourgeois historians and revisionists are trying to spread absurd slanderous fabrications, according to which the creation of the PCF was allegedly an artificial operation carried out from outside. It is easy to understand the malicious intentions that falsifiers are guided not only by the history of the PCF, but also by the history of France in general for the last 50 years. They would like to portray the case in such a way that the PCF is an alien entity that has nothing to do with the traditions and revolutionary past of the French socialist movement. They are silent about the real reasons why Lenin's ideas, despite the bourgeoisie's desire to silence or slander them, aroused interest and enthusiasm among the French working people, which resulted in the historic decisions of the 1920 Congress of Tours. By concealing these reasons and portraying the congress as an accidental episode in the development of the socialist movement, they try to create the impression that the PCF should not have emerged and that, therefore, it is necessary to ensure its disappearance. Some of these so-called historians and theorists look for support for such claims in the fact that after the Congress in Tours, a hard struggle was needed before the principles of Marxism-Leninism fully prevailed in the PCF.

Only those who do not want to take reality into account can think that the Congress of Tours should have finally decided on the creation of a communist party in France. The French Communists make no secret of the fact that their party was subject to bouts of the "infantile disease of leftism." For them, it is important that she managed to overcome this disease. This is indisputable proof that the birth of the party met an urgent need, that its organization was solid, and that its growth was necessary for the working class and for the people of our country. The Congress of Tours was a decisive moment in the revolutionary working-class movement of our country.

The Communist International, headed by V. I. Lenin, was right when its Bureau sent a letter in 1920 to all members of the French Socialist Party, to all the class-conscious proletarians of France: "It is impossible that the French revolutionary working class, with its brilliant revolutionary traditions, with its high culture, with its dedication, with its magnificent fighting spirit He did not create a powerful communist party at the time when the Soviet Union was on the rise.-

2 Cit. by: J. Duclos. October 17 of the year and France. Moscow, 1967, p. 366.

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the agony of bourgeois society is beginning. " 3 The French working class created this party through years of tireless efforts under the leadership of Maurice Thorez, Jacques Duclos, Benoit Frachon, and Waldeck Roche. The PCF has indeed become a new type of party, based on democratic centralism and the highest form of organization of the working class.

In order to appreciate the challenges and difficulties facing the French Communists, it is enough to look at the situation in which the French labor movement found itself in the first years of the twentieth century. April 30, 1905 The United Socialist Party (the French section of the Workers ' International) has brought about, for the first time in our country, the unity of the socialist forces. But the ideological and organizational foundations of this party were not strong enough for it to become the strong revolutionary party that the French proletariat needed. Reformist tendencies soon took over, and at the same time the weaknesses of the Gedist movement became increasingly clear. The SFIO became a typical party of the Second International, which was characterized by a divergence between word and deed, and which was primarily concerned with electoral success, and not with the struggle of the working people for their vital rights and for socialism. Jules Guesde, who did not skimp on criticizing Millerand at the moment when he went over to the bourgeoisie, enters the imperialist government after him. The course of class cooperation with the bourgeoisie disoriented the people and condemned them to extermination in the imperialist war.

Reflecting the ideology of the workers ' aristocracy, the petty and middle bourgeoisie, and even the bourgeois ideology, the SFIO leaders were not aware of the historical role of the working class. They had no confidence in the struggle of the masses and did nothing to mobilize and organize the masses concretely for this struggle. For them, socialism was only a matter of "propaganda" and "education." The establishment of socialism, in their opinion, should have taken place gradually, of course. The Socialist Party at best limited itself to supporting the strike struggle, taking it under its protection in the press and on the parliamentary platform, but refrained from any attempt to lead this struggle or, even more so, to lead the masses on the offensive, awakening the revolutionary consciousness of the working people. As a result, the working-class movement was influenced by anarcho-syndicalism, which Lenin called "a kind of punishment for the opportunist sins of the working-class movement."4 In the name of the proverbial "independence of the trade unions" from all parties, including the Workers ' Party, anarcho-syndicalism propagated the erroneous and harmful idea that the struggle of the proletariat is exclusively the business of the trade unions. Both opportunism and anarcho-syndicalism actually led to the opposition of the political and economic struggle, to the rejection of daily explanatory and organizational work, without which success in the proletarian struggle is impossible, to the denial of the need for an alliance between the working class, the working peasantry and the middle urban strata, to the isolation, demoralization and disarmament of the working class. These concepts have introduced habits and ideas into the socialist and labor movements that are as harmful as they are difficult to get rid of.

After the Congress of Tours, there was still a difficult road ahead for the formation of a new type of party and, above all, the path of overcoming the difficulties caused by the split and disorganization of the forces of the working class, most of which remained influenced by bourgeois ideology, both directly and through the reformist minority, with the support of the majority of the working class.-

3 "Cahiers du communisme", avril 1940, .N 41, p. 59.

4 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 41, p. 15.

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building a schismatic party. It took a vigorous struggle for the party to triumph over all those political and organizational principles, the understanding and application of which were the conditions for a real entry on the path opened in the Tour. All these principles stemmed from the nature of the working class as revealed by scientific socialism. "The main thing in Marx's teaching," V. I. Lenin emphasized, "is to clarify the world-historical role of the proletariat as the creator of socialist society." 5
If the French Communist Party has been able to take an increasingly confident step along this difficult path, it is only because it has consistently taken care, on the one hand, to protect Marxism-Leninism from bourgeois ideology and right-wing and" left-wing " opportunism, and, on the other hand, to develop theory based on an analysis of concrete conditions and changes The events that took place in the world and in France, thanks to which theory remained an effective weapon in the conditions of the modern era and our country. This was the case when our party brought the struggle for peace to the fore in its work, inextricably linking it with the struggle for bread, freedom, and socialism, in accordance with the teachings of V. I. Lenin. Jaurès, a victim of the reaction on the eve of the First World War, said: "Capitalism carries war with it, just as a sleeping cloud carries a thunderstorm." V. I. Lenin based his policy of the struggle for peace on a scientific analysis of capitalism in its last stage, characterized by the increasing exploitation of workers, the militarization of the economy, the plundering and oppression of peoples, the dictatorship of monopolies and their rivalry on an international scale, and their persistent desire to contain and destroy socialism.

Based on this analysis, our party, led by Maurice Thorez, sought, following the advice of V. I. Lenin, to expose the secret with which the capitalists are shrouding the preparation of wars, and sought to support the forces of world peace. By explaining that socialism is peace, by propagandizing the persistent and incessant struggle of the Soviet Union for the cause of peace and for general disarmament, by exposing the treachery of the "two hundred families" with their slogan " better Hitler than the Popular Front!", our party, which has become the soul of Resistance to Hitlerite fascism and its accomplices, has established itself as a consistent defender the interests of France and its people.

True to the principles of proletarian internationalism and continuing the best traditions of the French working-class movement, our party has boldly called on the working people and people of France to fight against the colonial wars waged by their own exploiters in Morocco, Indochina, Algeria, etc., helping the French masses to free themselves from the colonialist ideology propagated by the bourgeoisie and its collaborators, and the peoples of the former French to transform the colonial empire from a reserve of imperialism into an integral part of the great army of fighters against imperialism. Based on Lenin's analysis of the balance of power in the world, Maurice Thorez declared at the 1949 conference of the Communist Federation of the Seine: "No, war is not inevitable. There were significant changes in the balance of power compared to 1934 and 1939." Imperialism is no longer the prevailing system in the world. There are forces necessary to force imperialism into peaceful coexistence. The success of these forces depends mainly on their activity.

Following the teachings of V. I. Lenin, our party firmly took into its own hands the cause of the struggle for national independence and for the right of every nation to sovereign development. And as the PCF became more and more resolutely established on the positions of proletarian internationalism, zna-

5 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 23, pp. 1-2.

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It was no accident that the idea of national independence was increasingly falling into her hands.

The French Communist Party has always considered the unity of the international communist movement to be the decisive factor for the success of this movement as a whole, the success of each Communist party. This unity cements the alliance of all anti-imperialist forces. Waging an uncompromising struggle against any manifestations of anti-Sovietism, no matter where they came from, the PCF has constantly strengthened and preserved the friendship with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the unbreakable ties that bind our two parties. Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin allowed young Communists to better understand what our party owes to the founder of the CPSU and the first victorious socialist state. Conscious of its responsibility to the working class and the people of France, our party believes that it will fulfil its national duty the better, the more consistently it will carry out the duties imposed on it by the world revolutionary movement. Solidarity with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, with the working people of capitalist countries, with the national liberation movement, and with the world peace movement has been an integral feature of our party throughout its history.

At present, the PCF is guided in its activities by the decisions of the Moscow Conference of Communist and Workers ' Parties of 1969, in the preparation of which it took an active part at all stages. The XIX Congress of the PCF decided to do everything possible to implement the decisions that were collectively adopted at this Meeting.

Guided by scientific socialism, the correct application of which made possible the victory of the October Revolution, the PCF not only learned to transform the slogan of the struggle for peace into real actions, patriotic and internationalist at the same time, not only brought complete clarity to the understanding of issues of war and peace, national independence and sovereignty, but also actively contributed to the dissemination of understanding the necessity and true essence of proletarian revolution and socialism. Socialism is not the "return to barbarism" portrayed by the French bourgeoisie of the 1920s. It is destructive only in relation to the forces of destruction. As a new stage in the development of humanity, it preserves and even revives and fertilizes the best achievements of previous civilizations. Socialism cannot arise, as reformist social democracy believed, from a series of economic and social reforms carried out within the framework of bourgeois social relations, that is, while maintaining private ownership of the main means of production. For the same reason, socialism cannot be the result of the workers ' struggle for economic demands alone, since such a struggle is directed only against the consequences of capitalist exploitation, and not against its basis - private property.

Neither by integrating the bourgeoisie into the machinery of domination under the pretext of carrying out "a series of painless reforms," nor by limiting syndicalist activities to nothing but "politics," or by trying to unleash a revolution with the help of a few conspirators, can the working people's cause be truly served. The contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production cannot be resolved without the conquest of State power by the working class and its allies. After the Great October Socialist Revolution, this lesson of Leninism was so obvious to the entire French socialist and working-class movement that at the congress in Tours, even representatives of the reformist minority took part in the revolution.-

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The va was careful not to question the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat. According to them, they argued only about the forms of implementation of this principle.

The real preparation of conditions for mass intervention in politics is what the Communist Party has devoted itself to. Inspired by Lenin's teaching, it constantly emphasized the deeply democratic nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which makes it possible and requires the conscious and active participation of the vast majority of the population in the affairs of the country. In contrast to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which seeks to perpetuate itself, the dictatorship of the proletariat is only a transitional political form, which, once the danger of the restoration of capitalism is eliminated, gives way to the national state, a new stage on the path from the management of people to the management of things.

Anticipating the variety of forms of revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat, V. I. Lenin wrote as early as 1916: "Even trusts, even banks in modern imperialism, while equally unavoidable under developed capitalism, are not the same in their concrete form in different countries. The political forms in the advanced imperialist countries - America, Britain, France, and Germany-are all the more different, despite their general homogeneity. The same diversity will manifest itself on the path that humanity will take from present-day imperialism to the socialist revolution of tomorrow. All nations will come to socialism, it is inevitable, but they will not all come in exactly the same way, each will bring a certain originality to this or that form of democracy, to this or that kind of dictatorship of the proletariat, to this or that pace of socialist transformations of different aspects of social life. " 6 This national identity can manifest itself all the better the more limited the pressure of the bourgeoisie, and above all the pressure from outside, from the international bourgeoisie.

The thesis generalized and elaborated by the XX Congress of the CPSU about the diversity of the existing possibilities of transition to socialism is confirmed by the experience of our party and by the creative application of this thesis to the specific conditions of France. Shortly after the end of World War II, after the victory of democracy over fascism, Maurice Thorez, in an interview given to the English newspaper "Times" on November 18, 1946, showed that conditions for a peaceful transition can be increasingly implemented, and in a special case of this transition, in a country like France, it can occur with the use of a truly democratic parliament, provided that an irresistible revolutionary mass movement for socialism develops throughout the country.

As the concentration of capital in a few hands increases, the rule of the monopolistic bourgeoisie becomes less consistent with the forms of parliamentary democracy. As V. I. Lenin pointed out, imperialism is characterized by " reaction along the entire line." The financial oligarchy does not want to share power with anyone, in order to be able not only to increase the exploitation of the working class, but also to appropriate all the surplus value produced, changing the life of the country accordingly. It was precisely these goals that were pursued before the Second World War by the policy of the large French bourgeoisie, the "two hundred families". Thanks to the Popular Front, of which the PCF was the initiator and main creator, Paris avoided the establishment of an open dictatorship of the most reactionary elements of finance capital, similar to that established in Rome and later in Berlin.

6 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 30, pp. 122-123.

7 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 27, p. 419.

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However, there was a split in the workers 'ranks, and the result was the national catastrophe of 1940, a "magnificent surprise" for the bosses of the large capitalist monopolies that collaborated with the Nazis.

After the war, since 1947, the division of the working class has once again created an opportunity for the big bourgeoisie, supported by foreign imperialism, to disrupt democratic development, impose on the country a policy of reaction and colonial wars that paved the way for a regime of personal power. After the establishment of the Degollev regime, which our party correctly identified from the very first days as a concentrated expression of the power of monopolies, the PCF called for efforts to unite all popular movements in the struggle against the authoritarian regime in the service of big capital, in the struggle for the realization of the unity of the working class and the union of all democratic and anti-monopoly forces.

In order to create a basis for discussion and agreement with other democratic parties, and at the same time a concrete platform for an alliance between the working class, the working peasantry, the intelligentsia and other social strata that are falling victim to the policy of monopolies, our party has developed a draft program aimed at establishing truly democratic institutions, at implementing deep economic, social and cultural reforms. cultural reforms accompanied by an active policy of peace and disarmament. The main ideas of this program are set out in the Manifesto "For Advanced Democracy, for Socialist France", adopted at the plenum of the Central Committee of the PCF in Champigny in December 1968, as well as in the theses of the XIX Party Congress, held in early 1970.

In calling for the unity of the working class, for a democratic union, for the unification of all truly national forces with the aim of establishing, as Maurice Thorez put it, a genuine, continuously developing democracy, our party has always been guided by Lenin's instruction that " the development of democracy to the end, the search for forms of such development, the testing of them by practice, etc. all this is one of the integral tasks of the struggle for social revolution. Taken separately, no democracy will produce socialism, but in real life, democracy will never be "taken separately", but will be "taken together", exert its influence on the economy, push its transformation, be influenced by economic development, etc. This is the dialectic of living history. " 8
In order to enter effectively into the struggle for power, uniting the masses of the people around them, the working class must realize the unity of its ranks. To encourage the masses of workers to stand up for their present and future interests is the first condition of success. This requires not only that the class-conscious vanguard of the proletariat be freed from opportunist ideology and share the principles of Marxism-Leninism, but also that this vanguard win the confidence of the broad masses of the working people by renouncing all sectarianism and putting an end to what Lenin called "left-wing doctrinarianism."

If the achievement of a united front of the working class remains the task of daily struggle, then its implementation within the party itself was an urgent matter. When, under the influence of the Third Congress of the Comintern, which put forward the slogan "To the masses!" and the instructions of the ECCI, the united front was first discussed in France at the beginning of 1922, the Leading Committee of our Party rejected it. The right-wing opportunists speculated on the slogan of the united front, finding in it arguments in favor of revising the decisions of the Tours Congress, while the "left" opportunists saw in it a simple maneuver.

8 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 33, p. 79.

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Initially, only a small minority, including Maurice Thorez, understood the deep meaning of the united front. Maurice Thorez embraced this Leninist idea and went to great lengths to convince party members that "proletarian unity is a great weapon in the struggle for the socialist revolution." 9 Under the leadership of Maurice Thorez, the battle began to involve the entire party in mass actions, in the practice of joint struggle of all the exploited, regardless of their ideology - communists, socialists, Christians and others. On December 2, 1932, on the eve of the Nazis ' rise to power in Germany, Maurice Thorez stated: "We want to bring our policy in line with the Manifesto of the Communist Party written about 100 years ago, in which it was put forward that" they (Communists. There are no interests separate from the interests of the entire proletariat as a whole."10
On April 17, 1936, Maurice Thorez made a speech on the radio in which he called on Catholic workers, young people and veterans who had been deceived by pro-fascist organizations like the Battle Crosses to join forces with the Communists. The victory of the Popular Front in 1936 was the result of this struggle, which became the work of the entire party, a struggle that Georgy Dimitrov at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International called an example of how to implement the tactics of the united front. This policy of unity was once again vividly confirmed by Maurice Thorez in his final speech at the seventeenth Congress of the PCF. Each of the topics discussed in this speech illuminates the conditions of our struggle and points out the path that we should follow: inviolable unity of the party; unshakeable faith in the mass movement; reach agreement with the socialist Party; we must jointly work out a common program; unity is achieved in the struggle; for the unity of the international communist movement; the struggle for a united front - red thread of our history 11 .

Our Party, true to Lenin's teaching, has always believed that the struggle for workers ' unity must be waged in parallel with efforts to bring about an alliance between the proletariat and other strata of the working people. Even after the events of June 1848 and the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871, the founders of scientific socialism emphasized the necessity for the working class to realize this natural union. On this most important question, the October Revolution, V. I. Lenin and his party opened a concrete path of victory.

The young French Communist Party had to overcome opportunist and sectarian tendencies, whose supporters agreed in their disdain for the peasantry, as well as for the non-proletarian strata of the urban population. V. I. Lenin personally helped the French Communists develop correct theoretical views and tactics on the peasant question. V. I. Lenin also expressed fair criticisms of the agrarian program adopted by the Marseilles Congress of the Federal Communist Party in 1921, the general direction of which was approved by it. He stressed, among other things, that it was wrong to underestimate the degree of agrarian capitalist concentration in France. 12
Our party took Lenin's instructions into account to the maximum extent possible. She applied them not mechanically, but, on the contrary, constantly studying the real historical conditions of France and closely monitoring the changes that were taking place. So the former isolation is French-

9 M. Torez. Selected Works, vol. I (1930-1944), Moscow, 1959, p. 42.

10 Ibid., p. 47.

11 Pravda, 18. V. 1964.

12 See V. I. Lenin, PSS. Vol. 44, pp. 277-278.

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The growing solidarity of urban and rural workers, factory workers, and all physical and mental workers has given way.

With the absurd fable that Communists are against all property, fewer and fewer people are being fooled. The peasants driven from their land, the merchants and artisans forced to close their shops and workshops, the intellectuals forced to work for the capitalists and their state, see more and more clearly who the real expropriator is. More and more people are realizing that the Communists are right when they denounce private property, that is, the seizure by a minority of large-scale means of production and exchange, the exploitation and plundering of national resources by monopolies and their State. This opens the way to the broadest possible unity of action, and creates favorable conditions for a powerful anti-monopoly movement.

In the struggle for unity of action of the working people, our party has always attached special importance to the attitude towards the intelligentsia in accordance with the spirit and practice of Marxism - Leninism. V. I. Lenin repeatedly reminded that Marxism did not arise "on the side of the main road of the development of world civilization"; on the contrary, it arose "as a direct and direct continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism"13 . To preserve everything positive in the cultural heritage, to assimilate it, to make it serve for the benefit of the whole people - this is the consistent Marxist-Leninist line. Many of the most prominent intellectuals in our country joined the PCF, realizing that, as Jaures wrote, "the truly intellectual class is the working class, because it does not need any lies."

With the growing concentration of capital, while maintaining the dominance and dominance of monopolies, the remuneration of labor of various categories of intellectuals as employees spread and became universal, which K. Marx and F. Kropotkin pointed out. Engels was noticed as early as 1847. On the one hand, due to the development of science and technology, the number of this category of workers is increasing. Wages are increasingly making up the bulk of their income, and sometimes their entire income. They cannot avoid the operation of the law on the proletarianization of an increasing number of working people as a result of capitalist concentration. Their interests, both as employees and as creative workers, are increasingly in conflict with the interests of monopolies.

However, it would be wrong to simply equate the intelligentsia with the working class in capitalist countries. The social status of the various categories of intellectuals is far from uniform. A certain part of it even performs exploitative functions and receives in return a not insignificant share of the profits squeezed out of the working people. The nineteenth Congress of the PCF unanimously rejected Garaudy's false thesis about the proverbial merger of the proletariat and the intelligentsia into an imaginary "historical bloc", emphasizing, on the contrary, with all its firmness the necessity of an alliance between the proletariat and the majority of the intelligentsia. Precisely because the PCF is a party of the working class, it supports the legitimate demands of the non-proletarian strata who find themselves victims of the trusts and their power. It opens up the prospect of a common struggle for advanced democracy and socialism for all workers engaged in both physical and mental work.

The role assigned by history to the working class, it will be able to perform the better, the more it will be united and better organized into a class,

13 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 23, p. 40.

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and thus, as Karl Marx and Fr. Engels, in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in 1848, wrote: "to a political party." Thus, the unity of the working class is not the "old communist mania," as leftist elements claim, but a condition that the interests of the working class, both present and future, will be effectively protected. Unity is the condition that a united front of all democratic and truly national forces will stand against the domination of the financial oligarchy.

The emancipation of the working people can only be the work of the working people themselves, but without a revolutionary theory there is no revolutionary movement. The new type of Workers ' Party is a combination of the working-class movement and socialism. Therefore, as V. I. Lenin pointed out and as the entire history of our party confirms, organizational problems are always connected with political and ideological problems. The revolutionary party must be a well-coordinated set of grassroots organizations operating according to a single plan, it must be an organized whole capable of defining and steadily pursuing a correct political line based on the Leninist norms of democratic centralism.

Each member of the party must recognize the program and charter of the party, must be a member of one of its grassroots organizations, where he / she undertakes to work actively and regularly pay membership fees. This seems self-evident. But V. I. Lenin had to wage a fierce struggle in order to achieve the victory of his views, which were opposed, among others, by the right-wing opportunist Martov, supported by Trotsky.

In the young French Communist Party, too, there was a difficult struggle to overcome the double legacy of the old socialist party and anarchism, to put an end to deviations, and finally to achieve acceptance of the principle and then the practice of true collective leadership. It is no accident that this struggle ended with the adoption of Lenin's principle that the Communist Party, in order to be a true party of the working class in its theory and goals, must also be one in its composition, which requires the bold promotion of workers ' cadres and presupposes the development and strengthening of production cells, grassroots organizations created directly in the places where it is carried out. operation.

V. I. Lenin drew attention to the petty-bourgeois environment that surrounds the working class on all sides, to the danger of relapses of "petty-bourgeois spinelessness, fragmentation, individualism, transitions from infatuation to despondency"14 . The enemies of Marxism-Leninism, both on the right and on the "left," have never given up trying to undermine democratic centralism. It was no accident that during the preparation of the Nineteenth Congress of our party, Garaudy, the representative of the opportunist platform, which was unanimously rejected by the congress, simultaneously preached theoretically the dissolution of the working class in a "historical bloc" where the leading place would belong to the intelligentsia as a whole, that is, in practice the bearers of bourgeois ideology, and in practical terms-the rejection of the principle of democratic centralism. Precisely because democratic centralism means at the same time the broadest internal democracy and the strictest centralism, that is, the participation of every communist in the formulation of decisions and in their coordinated and controlled execution, it provides the party with both the means to study social reality in all its various aspects, as well as the militant initiative, firmness, discipline and indissolubility of the party's ties with by the masses.

14 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 41, p. 27.

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As Maurice Thorez tirelessly emphasized, the party is not an end in itself. It is alien to the spirit of sectarianism and narrow views. The Party is a necessary instrument for carrying out the grandiose transformations of our epoch, the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism all over the world. The Party is the instrument that enables the working class to conduct its liberation struggle most effectively. This struggle cannot be the work of a few people, no matter how well-intentioned they may be. This struggle is the work of the masses of the people, who take their fate into their own hands. History is made by the masses.

The broad speeches of workers and students in May-June 1968, the first major clash between the workers and the monopoly authorities during the period of increasing capitalist concentration, convincingly emphasized the aggravation of all the contradictions inherent in capitalism in the conditions of its state - monopoly stage. These speeches showed that our people face an inevitable alternative: either advanced democracy, which opens the way to socialism, or the continuation in one form or another of the rule of state-monopoly capitalism. There is no third way.

The new stage in the development of state-monopoly capitalism, which coincides with the deepening crisis experienced by capitalism in France and internationally, does not cease to aggravate the most negative aspects of politics, which the Gaullist-centrist authorities took over after de Gaulle's resignation. In the field of economics , this is an increase in monopolistic concentration carried out under the guise of "industrial policy" (in some cases to the benefit of groups controlled by large American and West German capital) and a renewed offensive on the standard of living of the masses. Increasing exploitation, worsening working and employment conditions, curbing wage growth, in particular in the sector directly controlled by the State, and limiting funds allocated to the general population - these are the goals that form the basis of the 6th plan developed by the authorities. They persist in pursuing these goals, despite the retreats and maneuvers to which they are forced by the struggle of the masses and the needs of economic development. In the political sphere, attempts to group all forces interested in preserving the privileges of capital around the current authorities are accompanied by clashes between the authorities, especially with Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, whose program basically repeats the 6th plan. This is nothing more than a continuation of the campaigns carried out earlier by Deffer, Lecanue and Poer, an operation with the dual purpose of helping the authorities to split off part of the left forces and thus prepare the possibility of maneuvering in a reactionary direction.

Only an alliance of all workers ' and democratic forces, which is increasingly resolutely opposed to the forces of the past, can and will pave the way for the truly new society that the masses of the French people are striving for. This is the meaning of the policy of the French Communist Party, which is true to the teachings of the great Lenin and the best traditions of the working class and the people of France.

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