The PCF colonialpolicy 1920-1962 : a critical assessment

Abstract EN

This paper discusses the attitude of the PCF (Parti Communiste Francais) towards the French colonial policy.

The PCF positions and attitudes varied from period to period in conjunction with the policy of international Communism, as well as, the position of the PCF and its relations with the French government.

Furthermore, important events such as the United Front, the Stalinism era, Second World War, European Community of Defense - - rearmament of West Germany - - (C.

E.

D.

), USSR, West European Alliance, Marshal plan, Cold War, the eviction of the Communists from the Ramadier government, Algerian liberation war, among others, played an important if not a decisive role in the PCF policy towards the colonial question.

The French Communists instead of mobilizing the French proletariat and promoting Communist parties in the peripheries to assist liberation movements in order to achieve their national independence, they rather lookedtowards establishing an alliance with the other forces of the left – Socialists as well as the bourgeois democrats.

Caught between Stalinism and reformism, the PCF experienced weaknesses and failures in its colonial policy.

It opted for opportunism and parliamentarianism at the expense of the veritable cause of the international proletarianism.

These contradictions had become common since the mid-thirties of the twentieth century for both the CPSU (The Communist Party of the Soviet Union), the PCF and the international Communist movement as a whole.