French Communist Party

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches the French Communist Party first through the fate of Michel Clouscard. He recalls that the party prefers Althusser to Clouscard as its reference philosopher, a choice he relates to the Cold War1. Clouscard waits for recognition from his Marxist comrades, which Claude Morilhat is the first to grant him, in 19872. He links the late publication of Le Capitalisme de la séduction by the Éditions sociales, in 1978, to the breakdown of the Common Programme. Held responsible for that breakdown, the PCF begins its decline: "below 15%, we'll publish you"3. In 2024, he answers a party member who says he feels lost. He belongs to no party, but if he were an activist, it would be in the PCF. He distinguishes the leadership, remote from its base, from the rank-and-file members, and recalls the party's record: its refusal to grant full powers to Pétain, paid holidays, the Marseille dockers repressed under Jules Moch. With Clouscard, he also explains this decline by a confusion of analysis, and he criticises the repetition of the top-level alliances of the Union of the Left4.

1. 1Avec Clouscard2 Aug 2016
2. 2D. Pagani / Réponse de M. Clouscard à C. Morilhat • Seconde Partie10 Sept 2019
3. 3Proust30 Jan 2020
4. 4L'après scrutin - Entrée en zone de turbulences11 Jul 2024

Introduction produced automatically from the 4 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.