The Internationalist Communist Party (, PCI) was a

Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. It was the name taken by the French Section of the

Fourth International The Fourth International (FI) was a political international established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International (also known as Comintern or the Third Inte ...

from its foundation until a name change in the late 1960s.

Creation

The Internationalist Communist Party was created in March 1944 by the merger of several Trotskyist groups, representing around 500 militants, in particular: *the Internationalist Workers Party of Yvan Craipeau, Roumain Spoulber and Marcel Gibelin; *the Internationalist Communist Committee of Rodolphe Prager and Jacques Grinblat, alias Privas; *the October Group of Henri Molinier, Raymond Molinier's brother. The negotiations were prepared by the Greek Michel Raptis, alias "Pablo". The UCI (Union Communiste Internationaliste, or Barta Group) refused to merge with the other Trotskyists, and later gave birth to

Lutte Ouvrière Lutte Ouvrière (, ) is a Trotskyist communist party in France, named after its weekly paper. Arlette Laguiller was the party's spokeswoman from 1973 to 2008 and ran in each presidential election until 2012, when Nathalie Arthaud was the candi ...

. The name chosen, Internationalist Communist Party, took up that of a French Trotskyist party created by Raymond Molinier and

Pierre Frank Pierre Frank (24 October 1905 – 18 April 1984) was a French Trotskyist leader. He served on the secretariat of the Fourth International from 1948 to 1979. Biography Educated as a chemical engineer, Frank was one of the first French Trotskyist ...

in March 1936, which published the newspaper ''La Commune''. This party had opposed the "official" section (recognized by

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...

), the Internationalist Workers Party of Jean Rous and Yvan Craipeau and had been described by the Trotskyist press as "anti-Trotskyist".

Pierre Lambert : Pierre Lambert (; real name Pierre Boussel ; June 9, 1920 – January 16, 2008) was a French Trotskyist leader, who for many years acted as the central leader of the French Courant Communiste Internationaliste (CCI) which founded the Worke ...

was one of its militants from 1937. This small group had an ephemeral existence, effectively disappearing at the start of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. However, in May 1942, a representative of the Paris section met in the free zone members of the group of Austrian Communist Revolutionaries in exile in France.

Splits and departures

Following the

Liberation of France The liberation of France () in the Second World War was accomplished through diplomacy, politics and the combined military efforts of the Allied Powers, Free French forces in London and Africa, as well as the French Resistance. Nazi Germany in ...

, the PCI had expectations of rapid growth and for a time did expand, but that growth was soon ended when a majority of the organisation broke away when a projected fusion with the Socialist Youth federation of the Seine failed to materialise. The PCI very quickly found subjects of tension around the role of the new party and on the nature of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. It underwent several splits during its history, sometimes in the form of simple departures of personalities.

The 1945 split: David Rousset joins Sartre

In 1945, David Rousset left the PCI to form with

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism, literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th ...

, in 1948, the Revolutionary Democratic Rally (RDR).

The 1947 split: Castoriadis and Lefort

In 1947, the Socialism or Barbarism tendency (

Cornelius Castoriadis Cornelius Castoriadis (; 11 March 1922 – 26 December 1997) was a Greeks in France, Greek-FrenchMemos 2014, p. 18: "he was ... granted full French citizenship in 1970." philosopher, sociologist, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, au ...

Claude Lefort Claude Lefort (; ; 21 April 1924 – 3 October 2010) was a French philosopher and activist. He was politically active by 1942 under the influence of his tutor, the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (whose posthumous publications Lefort lat ...

) left the party to move towards councilist positions, considering the

to be

state capitalist State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, ce ...

and not as a "

degenerated workers' state In Trotskyist political theory, a degenerated workers' state is a dictatorship of the proletariat in which the working class' democratic control over the state has given way to control by a bureaucratic clique. The term was developed by Leon T ...

" (a strategic question in the report to the

French Communist Party The French Communist Party (, , PCF) is a Communism, communist list of political parties in France, party in France. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its Member of the European Parliament, MEPs sit with The Left in the ...

The 1948 split: Yvan Craipeau

In 1948, Yvan Craipeau's tendency was excluded. The latter would later become president of the Federation of the Alpes-Maritimes of the PSU, other members of this tendency such as Jean-René Chauvin, joined the RDR and were excluded on the grounds of this dual membership.

The 1952 split

In 1952, the majority was excluded from the PCI by the minority of

and Michèle Mestre: these militants refused entry into the interior of the Stalinist parties, then advocated by the

which considered that the victory of the Stalinist bureaucracy was imminent. The small party then split into two rival groups both of which continued to use the same name. # The official PCI supported the International Secretariat of the Fourth International, and became the French section of the

reunified Fourth International The Fourth International (FI), founded in 1938, is a Trotskyist international. Following a ten-year schism, in 1963 the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat of the Fourth Internationa ...

in 1963. Its leaders included

. It merged in 1969 with the Revolutionary Communist Youth (JCR) to become the Ligue Communiste, which was re-established in 1974 as the Revolutionary Communist League. # The other PCI supported the

International Committee of the Fourth International The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is a public faction of the Fourth International founded in 1953. Today, two Trotskyist List of Trotskyist internationals, internationals claim to be the continuations of the ICFI; o ...

until 1971. It was led by

. In 1967, that organisation renamed itself the

Internationalist Communist Organisation The Internationalist Communist Organisation (, OCI) was a Trotskyist political party in France. Its successor was the Internationalist Communist Current of the Workers Party (France), Workers Party. History Origins The group's origins lay in the ...

(OCI).

Activities

From 1945, the PCI infiltrated the Socialist Youth (JS), where young people from the PCI and the JS did joint training courses and camps in 1945-47. Together, they took control of the

Youth Hostels A hostel is a form of low-cost, short-term shared sociable lodging where guests can rent a bed, usually a bunk bed in a dormitory sleeping 4–20 people, with shared use of a lounge and usually a kitchen. Rooms can be private or shared - mixed ...

(40,000 members at the time). Yvan Craipeau, PCI executive who sent André Essel, future CEO of

Fnac Fnac () is a French multinational retail chain specializing in the sale of entertainment Media (communication), media and consumer electronics. Fnac was founded by André Essel and Max Théret in 1954. Its headquarters is located in ''Le Flavia' ...

, to the JS, then held “fraction meetings” with all of the JS management and 3 of the 12 members of the SFIO management (including Deputy National Secretary Yves Dechézelles). In addition to Dechézelles, Adrien Tixier, chief of staff to the Minister of the Interior, Robert Pontillon (near future of Mitterrand), Roger Fajardie (future leader of FO and the Grand Orient de France), Max Théret (friend of Mitterrand and co-founder of the Fnac) and Jean Rous were among the socialists close to the PCI. Having come out of hiding at the end of 1945, the PCI presented candidates in 11 departments during the June 1946 French legislative election, gaining between 2 and 5% of the vote, although Yvan Craipeau failed to be elected by a few hundred votes in Taverny (Val-d'Oise). After 1952, the PCI had around 200 activists, mainly intellectuals ( Maurice Nadeau,

Laurent Schwartz Laurent-Moïse Schwartz (; 5 March 1915 – 4 July 2002) was a French mathematician. He pioneered the theory of Distribution (mathematics), distributions, which gives a well-defined meaning to objects such as the Dirac delta function. He was awar ...

Félix Guattari Pierre-Félix Guattari ( ; ; 30 March 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and created ecosophy ...

, etc.). However, it was joined from 1956 by PCF activists from the “La Voie communiste” group (which included Félix Guattari, by

entryism Entryism (also called entrism, enterism, infiltration, a French Turn, boring from within, or boring-from-within) is a political strategy in which an organization or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger, organiz ...

) following the publication of the Krushchev report, the Hungarian Revolution, and the worsening of the

Algerian War The Algerian War (also known as the Algerian Revolution or the Algerian War of Independence) ''; '' (and sometimes in Algeria as the ''War of 1 November'') was an armed conflict between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (Algeri ...

. The PCI invested itself mainly in anti-colonial struggles by supporting the independence of Algeria, the

Cuban Revolution The Cuban Revolution () was the military and political movement that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who had ruled Cuba from 1952 to 1959. The revolution began after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état, in which Batista overthrew ...

and the Vietnam liberation movement, as well as by its critical support for

Josip Broz Tito Josip Broz ( sh-Cyrl, Јосип Броз, ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito ( ; , ), was a Yugoslavia, Yugoslav communist revolutionary and politician who served in various positions of national leadership from 1943 unti ...

during the Yugoslav-Soviet split. It was also organized within the Union of Communist Students (UEC), then created the Revolutionary Communist Youth (JCR) in 1966, around

Alain Krivine Alain Krivine (; 10 July 1941 – 12 March 2022) was a French Trotskyist leader. Early life Krivine was born in July 1941 in Paris, France, the child of Pierre Léon Georges Krivine, a stomatologist, and Esther Lautman, the sister of French ...

(member of the PCI since 1960).

Dissolution

Active with the student movement in

May 68 May 68 () was a period of widespread protests, strikes, and civil unrest in France that began in May 1968 and became one of the most significant social uprisings in modern European history. Initially sparked by student demonstrations agains ...

, the PCI was dissolved by the government on June 12, 1968 at the same time as the JCR. But at the beginning of June 1968, the PCI began to prepare the merger with the JCR, and in 1969, the two other organizations became the Communist League. This was then dissolved in 1973 by the Minister of the Interior Raymond Marcellin following an attack on a New Order meeting, before re-forming under the name of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) in 1974.

References

{{reflist 1944 establishments in France 1968 disestablishments in France Communist parties in France Defunct political parties in France Fourth International (post-reunification) Political parties established in 1944 Political parties disestablished in 1968 Trotskyist organizations in France Trotskyist parties