domestic politics, the Communists now did nothing to restrain outbreaks of industrial unrest; the aim was to prove how necessary their participation in government was. Thus, the emphasis at the Eleventh Congress, held from 25 to 29 June, remained the PCF’s status as a ‘party of government’ and the need to bring the Socialists (if not the MRP) back to a left-wing alliance. Even on 22 September, Thorez was still calling for the PCF’s return to office within a ‘government of democratic union’.[388]

Just as L’Humanité was carrying Thorez’s message to thousands of Communist readers, Duclos was gathering with leading figures from the Italian and East European Communist parties in Sklarska-Poreba. What they heard from the Soviet Politburo member Andreï Zhdanov could leave them in no doubt that Moscow’s line had changed radically. The world, said Zhdanov, was now divided into ‘two camps’ – the ‘imperialist and anti-democratic’ camp aimed at the ‘world domination of American imperialism’, and the ‘anti-imperialist and democratic’ camp, led by the Soviet Union, which sought the ‘undermining of imperialism, the consolidation of democracy and the eradication of the remnants of fascism’. Particularly dangerous in this confrontation was the ‘treacherous policy of right-wing Socialists like Blum in France, Attlee and Bevin in England, Schumacher in Germany’, who, as the imperialists’ ‘faithful accomplices’, were ‘sowing dissension in the ranks of the working class and poisoning its mind’.[389]It followed that alliances with such traitors, as practised until May by the French and Italian parties, were a crass error. The French and Italian comrades now stood accused of legalism, opportunism, and parliamentarianism, as well as a soft line towards the Marshall Plan, and were forced to make a thoroughgoing self-criticism before going home.

The PCF digested the Zhdanov line within a month. Thorez reproduced it at length in his report to the Central Committee on 29 October, regretting the Party’s ‘slowness’ in analysing the new international situation. No longer were the SFIO and MRP placed, as a year earlier, in the ‘democratic’ camp: now all non-Communist forces, from Socialists to Gaullists, belonged to the American party’.[390]The new line was translated into action in France’s workplaces and streets, on the back of rising working-class discontent resulting from falling living standards. Now the PCF proposed to lead industrial action, through its CGT majority, and to add political demands to wage claims. On 12 November the CGT’s Central Committee linked a virulent attack on the Marshall Plan (henceforth an ‘attempt by warmongering American capitalists to enslave Europe’)[391]to calls for strikes in support of a 25 per cent wage rise. The strike wave that gripped France for the next four weeks involved some 2.5 million workers and an exceptional level of violence. Marseilles and other southern towns fell, albeit briefly, into a state of quasi-insurrection; CGT militants derailed the Paris-Lille express with the loss of sixteen lives. The Ramadier government fell on 22 November. But its successor, headed by Robert Schuman, held firm; the Socialist Interior Minister Jules Moch proved ferocious in his use of police and armed forces against strikers, adding further poison to his party’s now execrable relations with the PCF; the moderates in the CGT drifted back to work after three weeks; and the strike formally ended on 10 December. The PCF had made a significant demonstration of force; but it ended the year more isolated than ever, with the CGT now split by the defection of its moderates to form a new union, Force Ouvrière. In conventional political terms, the policy pursued since the Liberation was in tatters. But the autumn U-turn had returned the Party to Moscow’s good graces. A meeting with Stalin in Moscow on 18 November – three years almost to the day since their conversation of 1944 – confirmed Thorez as the leader who would take the PCF into its long crossing of the Fourth Republic desert.[392]

Conclusion: policy, office, votes – and Moscow

A conventional political party in a democratic system faces continual and difficult choices between ‘policy, office, or votes’.[393]Office is attractive to party leaders for the opportunities it offers to achieve policy goals, as well as for party patronage and personal advantage.[394]But the realisation of policy goals is always subject to constraints, whether political (for example, in relation to coalition partners) or economic and financial. In the long run, to dilute or sacrifice policy goals in the face of constraints simply to remain in office may lose votes, temporarily or permanently; a spell out of office may serve to revitalise a party (through the revision or reaffirmation of policies) and win back electoral support.

The PCF’s record in the Liberation era can be analysed from this perspective, On the one hand, it was inevitable that a party openly committed to the transformation of French society in the interests of the working class would have difficulty keeping working-class support indefinitely when governing at a time of great economic hardship. In that sense, the PCF’s departure from government in May 1947 was decided at Billancourt rather than Washington or Moscow. At the same time, the PCF drew important benefits from its time in office. Building on its Resistance record, it established a status – not held hitherto – as a party of government. It claimed credit for major policy achievements: many of the social transformations of the Liberation era, outlined in this book by Herrick Chapman, owed something to the activities of Communist activists, Deputies, and ministers, and earned the party a durable capital of goodwill among workers. The new nationalised industries became strongholds of CGT and PCF activists; local elections – despite setbacks in October 1947 – gave the party a network of municipalities, especially in the suburbs of major cities; both lasted for decades. The PCF’s roots within French society, even at the dawn of the twenty-first century, owed much to the Liberation era.[395]

But the PCF was not a conventional left-wing party; it was defined by