Marx on Suez

Back in the 19303, British Labor Leader George Lansbury, adhering to the Christian traditions of British Socialism, which owed as much to Methodism as to Marx, opened a meeting of the International Socialist Congress with the solemn announcement: "We shall now have one minute of prayer." At this, so the story goes, France's Leon Blum, steeped in the French anticlerical Socialist tradition of skepticism, turned away muttering: "Like hell we will."

Last week another such conflict in national outlook was making a mockery of Socialism's cherished claim to speak with one voice around the world. This time the trouble stemmed from the fact that Socialist Guy Mollet in his 16 months' tenure as Premier had committed France to a hard policy in Algeria and to the Suez invasion as well. Mollet's policies accurately reflected French nationalism, but in the eyes of other European Socialists, to whom self-determination and anticolonialism are integral parts of the Marxist credo (theoretically, at least), Mollet and his French colleagues had clearly fallen into heresy.

"This Is Insanity." The conflict first came to head in Copenhagen last winter when a French Socialist delegation led by Deputy Party Secretary Pierre Commin walked out of a meeting of the General Council of the Socialist International in protest at the passage of a British Socialist resolution condemning the Suez invasion. Three weeks ago Britain's Aneurin Bevan showed up as a "fraternal delegate" to the annual French Socialist Congress at Toulouse. When a French party functionary asked for an advance copy of his speech "for the press," Bevan snapped: "I didn't come here to address the press." And even before Bevan could deliver his pitch--a "tactful" plea that French Socialists treat their colonial brothers as considerately as British Socialists do--he found himself under attack by France's hawk-nosed Minister for the Sahara, Max Lejeune. Snapped Lejeune: "I know that Citizen Bevan arrived this morning to give us a lesson in anticolonialism. But three years ago he wasn't talking about British Africa or the Mau Mau."

Ex-Premier Mollet, when his turn came to speak, pointedly omitted the usual polite reference to Citizen Bevan's presence, and sought to show that Karl Marx himself, were he alive, would have approved the Suez invasion. His rationalization: "Marx and Engels taught that in any conflict a Socialist must side with the more progressive forces. Between Nasser and Ben-Gurion, I made my choice." On the prospects of independence for Algeria, Mollet was equally adamant: "No meetings, no generous conditional offers." As practically every Frenchman in the hall rose to cheer, Bevan remained seated, muttering in bewilderment: "This is all insanity."

"Agreement Is Unnecessary." A fortnight ago, the full Socialist International Congress met in Vienna. No longer so tactful, Nye Bevan bluntly compared "the sufferings in Algeria" to "the persecutions ... in Hungary," and the Scandinavians made their disapproval painfully clear by abstaining when Guy Mollet (who was not present) was elected a vice president of the International. Back in Paris last week, sturdy Pierre Commin, who headed the French delegation, professed himself undismayed by the Socialist schizophrenia revealed at Vienna.

"One day we would like to have a single international Party," said he. "But for our domestic problems, international Socialist agreement is not necessary."

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