IPuge 4--Tuesdgy, October 24, 1978-The Michigan Daily Eurocommunism on trial in France By David Osborne 1 lis(r'° Note: Since Jimmy Carter's electuon ; Ithe presidency, the rising I . 1?jllwli c >/ l tan independent Euro u m'HJ d \is inovement has been one of tIe adminis 'retion 's biggest worries. Here, Paelic Xe w Service Contributing Editor IDarid ()siw ln '>ie reports from Paris that Ie / e to ihe death or tinumph of the cntii Er'o r'iinunist movement may lie with snwer 'tru ,/es , within the French Comn ,nnist' Pert r, the only large Western IEur)ean >>/Nrt V that still holds its mlei x to t'he So vie iUnion. F i Ti i F kIRT time in its brief history, Euo:mn mnism is on public trial. With the ys S + France glued to the drama,, the 'rf'ncl t>oni:iiiudnist Party is locked in a hitter si ite I hat will determine the life or death of roc'mniunism in Frapee. Led iy % party ' intellectuals, the largely iungP menbership is fighting tooth and nail to drag its 01d 1ie leadership toward the final transtormat in from Western Europe's most Stalinist pat to an open, flexible and den~Mlirat .ioninimunist model. f'igg rid by the party's disasterous war with the Soia ist s, which cost the left alliance its expevt ed xist mrvin the March elections, the ba~tte has' been widely heralded as the greatest crisis i] pa it y hI istory. members beleve that with a strong Communist. Party, France might hold the key to the world's first democratic socialist experiment. However, should the old hardliners successfully hold the tide against the young militants, many observers believe that would strike a crippling, if not fatal, blow to the Eurocommunist movement. The French left will be weakand divided for years to come. And the Italian and Spanish Communist Parties, in which the Eurocommunist renewal is far more advanced, will be saddled with the burden of a recalcitrant neighbor whose image will forever raise doubts about the sincereity of their own transformations. The showdown will come at the French party's 23rd Congress early next year. T HE CRISIS is unique in many ways. "This is the first time a truly great debate has taken place within our party concerning our political strategy within France," said Communist intellectual Raymond Jean. "Before, in 1956, in 1968, the disappointment and disagreement centered around conflicts that were important, but that took place elsewhere - in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia." The many problems began last fall, with the break-up of the Union of the Left - a five-year- old Socialist-Communist-Radical electoral alliance that was predicted to walk away with the March legislative elections. After the rupture, the Communists concentrated their invective more against their Socialist rivals than the right. When the left lost, Communist Party leader George Mlarchais immediately declared that his party bore "no responsibility" for the defeat. Instead he heaped the blame on the Socialists. "Spontaneously - and I insist on the word spontaneously - the very night of the elections, when we heard the results, the debate began," - Daniel Vernette, a union militant, said. "For the first time many members were saying what they really felt about the party," Jean-Jacques Olivier, a Communist journalist in Paris, said. "And the party was afraid to face up to the situation." "It was the first time ever that there was general criticism of the leadership. You have to understand, we never crtiticize the leadership." THE CLASH boils down pang of Eurocommunism between the old and the new. to a -a birth battle' GI Von se heme nraoes importance to the entire of Euiropean politics, many party Eih ltyv-in' Vars (f Editorial Freedom Vol. LX, No. 41 News Phone: 764-0552 Ed ted and managed by students at the University of Michigan Th C on campus E AILI F ItaTHIS year, Harvard U nAiv eiity tyook a bold stand against gox'irrrnment spying when it ianned covert recruiting of foreign ,tudent s as 1A agents. Sunday, tha4 progressIve '.$ep was nullified by CIA director tansfield Turner's peremptor: announcement that his agency woul d not, comply with the Hat'var'd guidelnes. if we 'r :equired to abide by the rules of crv rcorporation, every a ademi i ns it ution, it would become impossible to do the required job for our country," he said, and added,. "Harvard does not have any legal authardiiy over us.'' Therein iH. the problem; no one seems to have authority over the CIA. These myopic chauvinists have too ng been erinitted to continue their surrept it iOUs activities outside the sphere of ivilian control. This snummer, orngress approved the agency's budget without even knowing how much it was. The terms "national security" and "for the good of the country" are liberally fed to the media by Mr. Turner and his cohorts, but these can hard l be justification for the gross 1rmalf'easan of the CIA: fighting the APLA M A ngola; aiding in the oyeirth rov of' the Allende government; its role in Santa Domingo, and probably countless other immoral acts yet to be revealed. That Harvard sought to sever its ties with the corruption and stench of the international espionage network is more than commendable, it is the only moral stance onep to any institution, and one we have encouraged the University to take. That the independent nature .of the CIA permits Mr. Turner to ignore Harvard's ban is an outrage. College campuses, our pillars of intellectualism, must not be used as tools by a notorious band of international mercenaries, thieves, assassins and spies. That the agency has gotten out of control is apparent. What is not clear is how to alleviate the problem. Since Mr. Turner is unmoved by protests or even official requests by universities; it is time for President Carter and Congress to force the director to pay heed to decency and morality - something that should have been done long ago. The president and Congress should no longer give the CIA license to continue its repugnant and pernicious exploits on American college campuses and around the world. For decades the party has been shackled by its Stalinist past, whence the present leadership dates. Its rigid ideology and vocabulary, its heavy-handed treatment of dissidents, its identification with the Soviet Union, its sectarian denunciation of all rivals on the left - all have kept it locked in what the French call "the ghetto" of political isolation. Since the formation of the left union in 1972, however, the party has moved away from the Soviet Union, increased internal democracy and deepened its commitment to gradual change and a fully democratic socialism. "It's very important to understand that more than half our members joined during this period," Vernette said. "I only joined the party because it had already changed." When the leadership abruptly reverted to its old tactics after the rupture with the Socialists, it left many members bewildered. What they fear now is a return to the ghetto. "We refuse to live according to dogma. We no longer accept word from above as if it it gospel," said Yves Roucaute, a young Paris dissident. Though reports from working class bastions around the country indicate less concern there, the debate in Paris, the political heart of the nation, has run deep enough to bring other party activities to a grinding halt - a rare occasion in the Communist Party. W HILE THE leadership has tolerated the internal discussions, it staunchly refused a demand by many cells and party intellectuals that it open one page every day in the party newspaper for the debate. Barred from their own press, such internationally known party intellectuals as Jean Ellenstein and Louis Althusser lost no time publishing their criticisms elsewhere. When Althusser wrote a series of critical articles in Le Mounde, the paper's sales jumped by 50,000 per day. Three hundred intellectuals published an angry petition demanding an open debate, quickly gaining another 1,000 signatures. And several prominent dissidents announced plans for a new weekly publication that would bring together Communists, Socialists, Trotskyists and other leftists in a common effort at innovation and communication - a clear heresy for the traditional Communist. The student initiated FMench "May revolution" in 1968 took everyone, including the com- munists, by surprise. Ten years later, the Left in France still has communication flems. - Leadership reaction was swift. Trying to locate the intellectuals from the more cautious rank and file, Marchais and others have charged the dissidents with everything from "Trying to split the party" to "declaring war." "Now among cell secretaries, section secretaries and the leadership, you don't hear any more of the criticism," Olivier said. T HE DISSIDENTS insist, almost to a person, that they are not contesting the general line of the party established by the last Congreess -.a commitment to democracy, openness to classes other than the traditional blue-collar proletariat and some form of left unity. In fact, they are in many ways trying to force the leadership back to that line. He and others claim the weight of these functionaries - whose continued employment depends on their complete loyalty to the leadership - stifles and initiative from below. As crucial as anything else is the party's image, a problem most often cited in its attitudeitoward the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. "It's true the party has made progress in criticizing these countries, but not enough," said one party journalist. "In our press we still call these countries socialist. But if these are socialist countries, even if we say they have made profound"errors, 'who in the world would want to be a socialist? Will the party change? Until the 23r Give France's importance to the entire scheme of Euro- pean politics, many party members believe that with a strong Communist Party, France might hold the key to the world's first democratic socialist experiment. "We can discuss anything in the cells today," said one Communist journalist. "But the question is, to what end? Some say, sure, we talk and argue in the cells, but that's it; the debate doesn't rise to the leadership. Me, I don't believe that." "The problem is that the party has become an enormous machine," countered Olivier, echoing leading dissident Louis Althusser's denunciation of the party apparatus as "a machine built to dominate." "It probably has more permanent functionaries than any other party in Europe," he said. Congress, which will follow three months of renewed debate, no one can say for sure. But whether confident of victory or anticipating disaster, a deep anxiety seems to run across the party ranks: Without a strong Communist Party, there is no hope for significant chance in France. "The Communist Party must be powerful and strong in the Union of the Left," said Olivier. "But for it to become strong now it must drop its Stalinist image. It must have an extremely democratic image, an image of a party in which one can express oneself." By Joel Beinin '8/ _ ARE FROM WER Z 51T, 15E& -we WORLD'S FIN6ST HE~ATH CARE! AMA-Ar 4 ' A Menachem Begin's . inflexibility 'To the victor belongs the spoils' is a well known political maxim. But the victor also arrogates to himself the right to rewrite history. And the ideological domination achieved in this manner can be just as substantial a burden on the defeated as the material effects of conquest. Michael Arkush's article praising Menachem Begin's "flexibility" in coming to terms with Sadat and Carter at Camp David (Daily, Oct. 18, 1978) is an astonishing attempt to rewrite history which fails miserably if one pauses only briefly to examine the facts of the case. How is it that Begin deserves the title "former freedom fighter"? During the British mandate in Palestine Begin was the commander of a gang of political terrorists P.L.O. In fact, the Camp David agreements have not obliged him to do either. Begin has not renounced in principle his claim that Jews have a biblical right to the West Bank, nor has he agreed to stop building settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip except for a brief three month pauseduntil an Isaeli-Egyptian treaty is concluded. Only with a supreme act of bad faith or utter political naivete can one claim that the spurious arrangements for "Palestine autonomy" negotiated at Camp David are a .genuine contribution to restoring to the Palestinian people their right to national sefl- determination. What kind of "autonomy" will be possible when Israeli military garrisons dot the West Bank and Gaza strip, prepared to crush any development that Israel perceived to be unfavorable? If this "autonomy" is so fine why is it that not a single Palestinian leader of any repute has endorsed it? Not even Jordan's King Hussein - butcher of the Palestinian people in September, 1970 and long time paid agent of the CIA has accepted the Camp David agreements. Is it not the least bit suspicious that no Arab state except Egypt has endorsed Camp David? Where then is Begin's flexibility? What did he give up? Is it true that Begin surrendered the Sinai including three airfields and about a dozen Israeli settlements inhabited by less than agreements are only a temporary papering over of the major issues in the Middle east conflict. The general thrust of Camp David is to allow S.adat some breathing room so that he can try to shore up Egypt's collapsing economy without the pressure of enormous defense expenditures. At the same time Camp David also ensures continued American hegemony in the Middle East since the two main protagonists in the lastlhree wars are now tied firmly, both politically and economically to the United States. Even if Camp David succeeds in temporarily producing quiet on the Israeli-Egyptian border the fact that the agreements have failed to address the fundamental issue of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination will eventually explode the agreements. Israel has made no meaningful concessions on this question. Begin and Dyan both declared that there will be no Palestinian state, no withdrawal from Arab Jerusalem, no total withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has not renounced the principle on which it is founded-Jewish supremacy in the territory of Palestine. For the Palestinians Camp David means at best the establishment of a Bantustan on the West Bank and Gaza. Is it any wonder that there are no takers for this offer? A qpp-,*N-lw r F I Mg"%%//' "" a r V111/%/1A I/D/%///A W1111A mi