| Western Europe is the birthplace of the international communist movement, and classical Marxist writers had high expectations for the socialist development of this area. Western European Communist Parties compose the most powerful and influential Communist group in Western capitalist countries, which is an important force on promoting the development of the socialist movement in the 20th century. Since the birth of the first proletarian party in the world, the Western European Communist Parties have passed more than one half century’s development. From the establishment of the World Communist Organization to the establishment of independent working class parties in national countries, from standing at the front line to lead people to struggle against fascism in World War Ⅱ to actively participating in parliamentary elections and forming government after war, from resisting the persecution came from Cold War to achieving the Communism’s resurgence, the Western European Communist Party have made some achievements and got some experiences and lessons in the exploration of the proletarian party’s organization construction in combination with the political, economic and social situation in capitalist countries. The development route of Western European proletariat parties’ organizational form in recent 100 years is:mass workers’ party-vanguard party formed by "professional revolutionaries"-modern mass party. On the surface, the modern mass party has came back to the mass workers’ party, but it is the response at a higher level, which performs as the rising spiral development. The exploration of European Communism was not successful, along with the end of the Cold War, Western European Communist Parties had fallen into extremely difficult situation, some of the big and old parties either changed the party’s spirit or dissolved itself. Some of the Communist parties that survived confronted with the development difficulties, and some of them descend to the insignificant marginal groups in the domestic political arena.Since the end of Cold War, the Western European Communist Parties which persist in forging ahead in the low tide of the world’s socialist and communist movement, introspecting profoundly on the historical experiences and lessons of the world socialist movement, resisting the domestic and foreign pressure and continuing to struggle resolutely for realizing socialism and communism. They make efforts to adapt to the changes of domestic and international situations, actively adjust the theory and strategy, and devote to explore the theoretical strategies and activity ways that suit to their national conditions. After long-term unremitting efforts, the organizational strength of the Western European Communist Parties has gradually stabilized, and the social influence has gradually recovered either, although the recovery is just in the relative sense. We must also see that the Western European Communist Parties were deeply effected by the Soviet Communist Party for a long time, which blocked their creative exploration according to their own national conditions on some level, and the collapse of Soviet Union exactly played the role of "deregulation" which makes the Western European Communist Parties can independently explore the reform road suites to their own conditions. From then on, the Western European Communist Parties began to get rid of the blind pursuit of the Soviet model like dogmatism, closed and rigescent, and started a journey of change and transformation in different degree and level. The indigenization practice of Marxism has got new development and new breakthrough since then.This paper argues that the French Communist Party (PCF), the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the Communist Refoundation Party of Italy (PRC) are the behalf of the three types of change and organizational transformation of the Western European Communist Parties:KKE belong to the conservative type, it’s organization is stick to the characteristic of Leninist Party and rarely changed; PRC belong to the radical transformation type which abandoned the communist heritage in a greater extent; PCF have reform itself in some respects which belonged to the steady type. This Paper made a systematic investigation on the change and organizational transformation of France, Greece and Italy’s Communist Party. The basic investigative point of view include the party’s program, the party’s goals, organizational attributes, organizational principles, organizational structure, organizational aspects of the functioning of this system. Through these visits, we are hoping to have more than one angle and full awareness on the organization’change of the Western European Communist Parties. On the whole, PCF, KKE and PRC are all have a long history and extensive influence, but they are facing grate difficulties in development in recent years These three parties fall into a situation that the confused of political goals, a huge loss of members, the collapse of basic organization, political influence plunged because of the anti-communist ideology in a dominant position of Western European countries in a long term. In particular the fact that They do not stick to their own theories dogmatically and they made great efforts to make constantly adjustment, trying to adapt to the changing situation. For example, the French Communist Party corrected his theory and practice of some bias, and gradually turned to more emphasis on the identity of the party’s class position and the working class identity, emphasize the Communist Party is different from the Social Democratic Party since the beginning of the financial crisis.This dissertation tried to build a comprehensive evaluation model about organizational reform and transformation of the Western European Communist Parties. We not only focused on these parties’short-term behavior level, namely their electoral performance. What’s more, we paid attention to their long-term goal realization, namely their performance outside the parliament, which reflected how they inherited communist heritage. According to this model, we firstly based our evaluation on policy orientation which included ideology, inheriting communist organizational heritage and struggling outside the parliament. Through this evaluation, we could analyze organizational reform and transformation effect of PCF, KKE and PRC. Then, we based our evaluation on electoral politics which included electoral performance, election-orientation alliance of political party and participation in government. Through these evaluations, we came to the following conclusions. The KKE, whose theory and policy are excessively continuous and stable, is radical left among the Western European Communist Parties. The Communist Party of Germany, Britain and Portugal are similar to KKE. The PRC always keeps wavering, has no programmed theory and policy. Until now, it does not formulate a unified party creed. The PCF firstly showed a radical attitude after the drastic change in Soviet Union and East Europe. Then, it intended to weaken ideology and identification to meet the demand of parliament struggle. After entering 21st century, the PCF consciously began to turn back to tradition and pay more attention to distinctive position, creed and policy of communist party. On the whole, the transformation of PCF and PRC both showed a similar trend of radical-moderate-radical. However, the PRC did better at innovation, which inherited from the former Italian Communist Party. The PRC considered itself to be the most innovative party of international communist movement and carried out bigger reforms to heritage of communist organizations. By contrast, the PCF was more like a moderate post-communist party, and had been hovering between persistence and changeability. Of course, it is understandable that they chose different adjustment range and reform path since their conditions of states and parties were different. To any communist party, an impassable chasm emerged when they managed to balance their policy and election goal. It was hard for them to maintain special action capability and identification in reform and transformation.The financial crisis of 2008 created favorable historical chance and development environment for Western European Communist Parties. They seized this opportunity and tried to overcome a series of difficulties and challenges. These challenges included political squeeze from alternative left parties, the decline of political organization caused by modern information technology represented by social media, the political fragmentation trend caused by internal split, the lack of pragmatic political agenda, identity crisis in transformation process, and so on. As a result, they carried out effective development transformation and strength integration. In terms of theoretical system, they timely adjusted guiding thoughts and theoretical basis, attached importance to ideological and class struggle, advocated awakening working class’s rebellious consciousness and class consciousness and establishing the broadest united front with a core of anti-capitalist. In terms of practice, they redefined the strategic goals and the near-term tasks according to post-crisis situations and national conditions, carried out strategies of combining struggles inside and outside of parliament and conducted positive adjustment in international joint. The exploration, adjustment and reform conducted by Western European Communist Parties under new circumstances and situations provided helpful experience and practical enlightenment for some historic problems which covered how capitalism transit to socialism and which path the Western European Communist Parties should choose to push forward reform and transformation. Their accomplishment also made the world see the prospect and hope of socialism from low ebb of international communist movement. At present, the Western European Communist Parties still have a long way to come to the end of organizational reform and transformation. How to formulate revolutionary strategies that suits to respective national conditions according to development of time and capitalism is still a pressing arduous task to current Western European Communist Parties and other socialist forces.It should be noted that, in the long run, the gain and loss, right and wrong of reform and transformation can only be tested and concluded by practice in the future. From the international communist movement, we can learn a lesson that socialism will go nowhere if it follows only one model and pattern and a dogmatic Marxism-Leninism will also not work. Socialism needs timely adjustment and reform in the course of development. For now, at least, the reform and transformation of Western European Communist Parties are not successful, which reflects that these parties have not completely adapted to current social environment and not made breakthrough on topic of incorporating Marxism with certain national conditions. As a communist party, using reform as an excuse to simply weaken ideology and Marxist basic values is equally hard to stand firm and grow up in complicated national and international situations. Not only is this practice difficult to gain support of middle class, but the most loyal supporters may also leave. Of course, we are more willing to believe that, with deep cultural accumulation, glorious revolutionary tradition and theoretical innovation spirit, Western European Communist Parties will break a socialist way conforming to national characteristics through brambles and thorns. |
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