Meeting and Converging: Theoretical Attempts of the French Communist Party
In the horizon of the history of world socialist development and the international communist movement, guided by the methodology of upholding the fundamentals and breaking new ground, conducting timely theoretical exploration, practical research, and the re-interpretation and re-narration of the French Communist Party’s (PCF, hereafter "French Communist Party") communist activities within a developed capitalist country is the correct key for us to unlock the century-long history of the French Communist Party’s renewal for survival and its contemporary development.
Upholding the Fundamentals and Breaking New Ground is Both a Worldview and a Methodology
Upholding the fundamentals and breaking new ground [1] consists of steadfast adherence rather than rigid persistence; furthermore, it is not a lack of adherence or a self-proclaimed, disguised form of guarding or waiting. Persisting in upholding the fundamentals and breaking new ground is both a scientific summation of historical experience and a scientific guide for continuing to advance theoretical innovation based on practice. This concept includes two aspects—upholding the fundamentals and breaking new ground—which form a dialectical unity. From the perspective of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, the essence of both aspects is to persist in proceeding from objectively existing facts, maintaining objective reality as the fundamental starting point for considering problems and handling affairs, respecting the laws of historical development, and emphasizing the recognition, mastery, and correct application of laws, rather than proceeding from any subjective imagination or violating and denying laws. Upholding the fundamentals and breaking new ground embodies an important Marxist methodology for understanding and transforming the world.
At the level of worldview and methodology, persisting in upholding the fundamentals and breaking new ground possesses a certain universality and significant guiding significance for the theoretical exploration and realistic practice of the world socialist movement and communist parties of various countries. Whether one can persist in upholding the fundamentals and breaking new ground is also the key point regarding the survival and development of the world socialist movement and its study.
In the history and reality of world socialism and the international communist movement, the French Communist Party has walked the path of integrating theory with practice since its founding in 1920; it is a paradigm for the survival, development, and transformation of communist parties in developed capitalist countries. Since entering the 21st century, faced with new circumstances, the French Communist Party has sought renewal for survival through the dimension of self-revolution, advocating for the parallel advancement of theory and practice, and vigorously implementing realistic measures that synchronize self-organizational transformation with theoretical transformation. The theoretical and practical explorations of the French Communist Party based on "Common France" (La France en commun) merit attention.
Confronting the Dual Internal and External Dilemmas and Challenges
The world today is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century. New trends such as global multipolarity, economic globalization and regionalization, cultural diversity, social informatization and digitalization, and the digitalization of production and life are developing in a continuous, deep, and comprehensive manner. Simultaneously, the instability and uncertainty of the international situation have become more prominent, and humanity is facing unprecedented global challenges. Given the rapid changes in the international situation, the internal political ecosystem of France is also accelerating its transformation, leading to new patterns in the survival and development of the French Communist Party.
First, the "mutation" of the French political ecosystem poses an external challenge to traditional left-wing parties such as the French Communist Party. The process of deconstruction and reorganization of the French political arena continues. Since the founding of the Fifth Republic, the basic pattern within the National Assembly has been a confrontation between the left and right camps taking turns in dominance—a pattern termed the "bipolarized multi-party system." The transformation of this pattern occurred in 2022. That year’s presidential election and its results showed that the dominant position of traditional left and right parties no longer exists; in this sense, the traditional political structure of the French parliament has been completely altered. The election results indicated that the process initiated in the previous presidential election (2017) continues: the two major traditional parties, the Socialist Party and the Republicans, are increasingly in decline. French party politics has reached a point of no return on the path away from the bipolar pattern of left-right opposition. These results herald an accelerated move toward a new "tripod" structure of centrists, the radical left, and the far-right, a trend that became a fixed reality in 2022. Given that France’s internal economic, political, social, and cultural problems are increasingly deep-seated and hard to reverse, Emmanuel Macron’s administration (since 2017) has faced arduous struggles. Meanwhile, the National Rally (formerly the French National Front) represented by Marine Le Pen has risen rapidly and developed at an increasing pace in the French political arena due to its targeted and inflammatory political programs and policies, constituting a new challenge and threat to the survival and development of the French Communist Party.
Second, vacillation in guiding ideology and alliance strategies constitutes the internal challenge facing the French Communist Party. Influenced by the policies of the Socialist Party and the Greens, the French Communist Party's "New Communism" theory can be described as all-encompassing but lacking a core concept. This has led to political theory losing its role as a precursor and strategic guide, ultimately causing the French Communist Party to follow suit in its actual policy proposals. Even if the policies currently pursued by the French Communist Party undergo proactive and adaptive adjustments to accommodate changes in the electoral situation, the party has already lost many supporters in the process of policy vacillation, greatly depleting its already limited political resources.
Political Impasse Closely Related to Social Contradictions
Today, under the impact of economic globalization, French society is suffering from the most serious fragmentation since the establishment of the Fifth Republic. Social trust is gradually being lost, and intergenerational pressure is rising abruptly. The differentiation between different social strata is becoming increasingly severe, and the common development of French society has encountered insurmountable obstacles. The negative anxiety of the French public regarding the future has reached a historic high. Correspondingly, in French political life, parties within the context of capitalist party politics have become incapable of serving as the bridge connecting the state and society. Therefore, in the aforementioned atmosphere of the social and political ecosystem, although the French Communist Party’s political predicament is directly linked to the French party system, it can be described as a concentrated expression of French social contradictions.
Externally, the plight of the French Communist Party can be seen as a concentrated manifestation of the overall plight of the French Left. The flaws in Western democratic systems and party political systems are important reasons why parties like the French Communist Party encounter dilemmas in ideology and political stance. Combined with the expectations of the French grassroots and the bourgeois ruling class for so-called "innovation, change, and development," the practice of opportunism [2] within French left-wing parties has damaged mutual trust. The alternation of power between the center-left and center-right has prevented the implementation of effective political policies, causing internal social contradictions and conflicts to accumulate over time and seriously damaging national interests. These factors have led to the French Communist Party's political predicament falling into a long-term impasse.
Internally, the French Communist Party has lost firm theoretical guidance, with frequent and volatile adjustments in theoretical policy, resulting in ideological confusion within the party. The 32nd Congress of the PCF adjusted the party's principles and policies: to pursue a more radical line, it took opposition to neoliberalism as the party's banner and opposition to the right-wing government's reforms as its primary task. Politically, it gradually canceled the strategy of allying with the Socialist Party, thereby highlighting the party's militancy. The 35th Congress continued these propositions and proposed the establishment of the Left Front (Front de Gauche) to strengthen cooperation between radical left parties and organizations. The result, however, was a loss of efficacy in alliance actions, and the French Communist Party suffered losses in various national elections, eventually being replaced by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s "La France Insoumise" (France Unbowed). At this juncture, the trend toward the further marginalization of the French Communist Party was set.
From an ideological perspective, the French Communist Party is losing the ideological identity markers that define it as a communist party. The PCF transformed itself from a "vanguard party" into a "mass party." Due to its disregard for ideological identity in the bourgeois parliamentary struggle, many original supporters became increasingly disoriented and defected to other parties. Beyond parliamentary struggle, in political elections, due to adapting to objective realities such as the national and electoral situation, and in a blind, short-sighted attempt to broaden its voter base, the French Communist Party was forced to adopt a "center-leaning path." This resulted in unsatisfactory theoretical development, with the outcome appearing as if it were "stitched together from ideological fragments of vastly different colors, becoming to a large extent like any other party."
Launching Response Measures in the Face of Crisis
Entering the 21st century, many new changes and adjustments in international political forces and patterns have compelled the French Communist Party to face and adapt to new issues of civilization, development, and peace presented by world politics, economy, security, and ecology. Based on 21st-century "New Communism," the French Communist Party timely promulgated the "Common France" program. Under the cognition of "self-revolution," it sought transformation, advocating for the parallel advancement of theory and practice and implementing realistic measures that synchronize self-organizational transformation with theoretical transformation. At the same time, it balanced the critique of and opposition to capitalism to respond to new situations.
First, at the 38th Congress of the PCF, the entire membership discussed and passed the resolution "Manifesto of the Communist Party for the 21st Century" and determined "Common France" as the new guiding theoretical ideology. It changed the party emblem, the theoretical party journal, and the website homepage layout, striving to establish a brand-new political image before supporters and planning for the next stage of elections. The main content of the 38th Congress concerned how to avoid "making a wedding dress for others" [3] (i.e., benefiting others at one's own expense) and weakening its own political strength, intending to reverse the dilemma of the century-old PCF becoming a marginal minor party in French politics. In April 2023, Fabien Roussel was re-elected as National Secretary at the 39th Congress, allowing the process of gradually implementing the spirit of the resolutions initiated by the PCF to be realized.
Second, it uses "Common France" as its guiding ideology. Based on putting people first and through various forms of research, the French Communist Party formed its guiding ideology, "Common France," which reflects the will and expectations of the masses. As the theoretical guiding ideology of the French Communist Party in the new era, "Common France" intends to establish and expand the theory of 21st-century "New Communism" and formulate a brand-new action program: 1. People taking control of investment and distribution systems; 2. Establishing a new French Republic (i.e., the Sixth Republic); 3. Providing full support for every individual's employment and development; 4. Achieving genuine equality between men and women, especially in terms of appropriate proportions and equal pay for equal work; 5. A united and open France; 6. Establishing a production and living system based on sustainable development. Marx and Engels' statement in the Manifesto of the Communist Party that "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" has formally become the motto of the new generation of French Communists. Creating the conditions for everyone's free and comprehensive development is the fundamental reason and value for the French Communist Party's actual existence.
Third, it proposed the policy proposition that "the European Union belongs to the people." The French Communist Party emphasizes that the people of Europe must and can only unite to oppose capitalism. They advocate for building an EU based on serving the people, so as to jointly develop and share achievements, enabling every European—and by extension, the European people—to become participants in the EU reform process, constructing an EU of the people rather than a neoliberal EU, and certainly not an EU dominated by the shadow of American hegemony.
Fourth, it has strengthened the Central Committee's participation in the construction of grassroots organizations. The Central Committee of the PCF actively participates in the work of grassroots party organizations, conducting various forms of discussion and analysis, turning grassroots voices into motions at congresses or proposals by deputies, laying the foundation for the transformation of the communist project from theory to reality. Simultaneously, it persists in holding the L'Humanité Festival and continues to run the Marxist Summer University. The new party emblem approved at the 38th Congress added a design featuring a five-pointed star with a leaf at the top: the star pattern is intended to enhance external historical identification with and connection to the French Communist Party as a communist party, while the leaf design highlights the importance the PCF places on ecologism.
From a realistic perspective, the theoretical and practical exploration of "Common France" carried out by the French Communist Party represents its new views on how to realize communism under new conditions. The PCF believes that the development of human society has reached a turning point and is facing a comprehensive and thorough crisis of capitalism. It argues that the category of the "future" must be proposed, utilizing a new civilization—namely, various types of revolutions such as ecological, labor, information, and monetary revolutions—to respond to "terrible threats" such as economic, ecological, food, health, social, and democratic crises, thereby liberating humanity from capitalism and liberalism. The communist project has never before been such a horizon of civilization and a path of struggle.
Based on this, the French Communist Party has clarified that the core struggle strategy of the parliamentary road is to prepare for the revolution to overthrow the capitalist system. While regaining the support of the laboring class, which constitutes the majority of the population, it intends to actively prepare for alliances in the eco-social field and on levels such as feminism, anti-racism, and internationalism. Although this process of exploration has not interrupted the evolutionary logic of the party's theoretical programs—such as "Socialism with French Characteristics," "New Communism," "People First," and "Common France"—the actual practical result has been a failure to timely curb the trend of the PCF's further marginalization, instead leading the party into new predicaments. This dilemma of theoretical evolution and practice implies that the French Communist Party's long-standing, implicit understanding of the reality of capitalist development has fallen into a dual bottleneck of theory and reality.
Reviewing the century-long history of the PCF, as a communist party in a developed capitalist country, the French Communist Party's understanding of the critique of capitalism and the practice of actual socialism fundamentally constrains its realistic process of transforming capitalism and advancing its vision of socialist construction. For over a hundred years, the PCF has formed its own unique struggle strategies around questions such as what socialism is and how to build it in a developed capitalist country. Certainly, combined with the characteristics and specific circumstances of France and the French Communist Party, these struggle strategies may appear as theoretical or academic programs. However, this is not only an important marker distinguishing the PCF from communist parties in other developed capitalist countries and some developing countries; it is also the key for us to understand the century-long history of the French Communist Party's struggle.