This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.
This up-to-date new analysis of the French Communist Party reveals it as an entirely unconventional political force: not a normal party vying for office, but a Leninist bureaucracy armed with an apocalyptic mission to deliver humanity from capitalism. Its interests have been defined as part of an outpost of a world revolutionary movement; and whilst its strategies may have varied, they have done so in order to serve Soviet foreign policy purposes. D. S. Bell and Byron Criddle trace the history of the Communist Party in France from its origins. They focus in particular on the period since 1958 and explore the Party's unique organizational structures and international loyalties. They examine structure and ideology, relations with the Socialist Party, electoral performance, and the 1980s decline in the Party's fortunes. This study will be essential reading for all students of contemporary French history and politics.
Drawing on extensive interviews with thirty-four surviving Communist militants and an analysis of voter behavior, this book focuses on the Party's persistent strength during the interwar period in such rural strongholds as Limousin and Dordogne.
Workers and Communists in France analyzes the relationship between the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) and Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), France’s largest and most influential trade union organization. All trade union movements in advanced capitalist societies have had to develop mechanisms to achieve their goals within the labor market and the political realm. The nature of such mechanisms varies dramatically from society to society. George Ross examines a trade union movement whose philosophy and actions are derived from the political and organizational perspectives of the Communist Third International tradition. Workers and Communists in France submits the modern history of the relationship between the PCF and the CGT to the complex test of a cost-benefit analysis. How well has the linkage between party and trade union worked for French Communism, for French workers, for the French left, and for French society? Since World War II, the ties between the PDF and the CGT have enabled them to promote and perpetuate sharp notions of class and class conflict among French workers and French society in general. The CGT has been the central agency through which French Communism has shaped debate about the nature of French society, a debate with profound effects on the structure of French politics and intellectual life. On the other hand, the basic contradiction between the Communist Party’s desire to use the CGT for partisan purposes and the CGT’s need to generate mass support has never been resolved. This failure may have followed from the very structure of the relationship between the PCF and the CGT, as well as from consistently inappropriate strategic calculations by the PCF. Ross concludes that the Communist Third International's concept of the link between party and trade union is becoming obsolete. The future of Communism in France may well depend, therefore, on a reappraisal of the party’s relationship with organized labor. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.
This book analyzes the dynamics through which the two major communist parties of the capitalist world—which in the 1970s had great influence on their respective national political contexts since the 1980s are increasing their marginality and, although in different forms and with different timeframes are unable to stem the decline of their political and cultural influences on the working classes.
The French Communist Party has traditionally been identified with the urban working class but paradoxically its position as France's main left-wing party was dependent upon support from the countryside. "Communism in Rural France" explores for the first time the party's complex and often misunderstood relationship with agricultural labourers.During 1936 and 1937 a bitter struggle between agricultural workers and farmers swept through parts of the French countryside. Coinciding with the urban 'social explosion' which followed the victory of the Popular Front government, the strikes, farm occupations and increased unionisation panicked farmers and shocked right-wing opinion, which blamed the spread of the 'corrupting' collectivist influences of urban society into the countryside on the French Communist Party."Communism in Rural France" traces the evolution and characteristics of the agricultural workers' movement from the turn of the 20th century through the inter-war years, as well as the response of the government and the resistance organised by farmers during 1936-37. By focussing on agricultural workers, John Bulaitis sheds light on a section of the rural population that has been generally overlooked in French rural and labour history. "Communism in Rural France" explores their relationship with the French Communist Party and illuminates an important and previously neglected aspect of European politics.
