Clampdown in the West

"Our cause is just, our objectives will be achieved--all the more quickly when our methods have been profoundly changed."

With those words, Philosopher Roger Garaudy strode defiantly from the platform of the French Communist Party's 19th Congress in Nanterre. Not one of the 960 delegates applauded. They did not expel him from the party, but when the congress ended last week Garaudy was no longer a member of either the Politburo or the Central Committee, on which he had served for 14 and 24 years, respectively. For his outspoken criticism of the Czechoslovak invasion and other Soviet ventures, France's Communists had in effect demoted one of their most distinguished leaders to the rank and file. He will probably lose even that standing, he says, when his new book is published this week. Its title: The Whole Truth.

In thus punishing dissent, the French were following an impulse that, in some form, has seized many Western Communist parties of late. Especially in the larger ones, the hierarchy is reasserting demands for an orthodox, centralized ideology. Open criticism is rarer--and riskier--than it has been for years.

New Bloc. Garaudy, 56, is one of the pre-eminent figures of France's intellectual left. The son of a poor Marseille working-class family, he became a convert to the religious principles of Karl Barth and to the political ones of Karl Marx, in that order, by the age of 20. He remains a firm believer in both, and has been one of the foremost advocates of a Marxist-Christian dialogue. In attempting to reconcile the two, he applies Barth's lesson--"Whatever we say about God, it is men who say it"--to dialectical materialism. The humanism in both Christianity and Marxism, Garaudy believes, provides a meeting ground. He is the author of 22 books on subjects as diverse as Picasso and the Sino-Soviet dispute.

The orthodox leaders of France's Communist Party, which regularly draws 20% of the vote in Assembly elections, have become increasingly angered by Garaudy. He sees the emerging class of scientists and technicians as "a new historical bloc" that should be considered allies of the workers--a view that standard party ideologues consider dangerously revisionist. After the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, Garaudy said bitterly: "Brezhnev surpassed Stalin."

Orthodoxy Supreme. The post-Czechoslovak era has placed nearly all Western Communists in a painful dilemma. In the beginning, many party leaders hotly criticized the Soviets. Now, though most still consider the invasion a dreadful mistake, they argue that continued protest can do no good and should cease. Many party members, especially intellectuals, refuse to be silent; they argue that the Communists can make little headway among voters in the West as long as they remain subservient to Moscow. Nonetheless, says British Sovietologist Leopold Labedz, "the trend is toward more internal control, clamping down on heretics and making local orthodoxy supreme."

This has also been evident in the West's largest Communist party, the Italian, with 1,500,000 members and 25% of the national vote. Last lune a dissident faction in the Italian party started publishing a newspaper called // Manifesto, whose attacks on the leadership and demands for revolution gave Italian Communists the somewhat dubious distinction of having their own underground press. Since late last year, no fewer than 272 Communists associated with the paper have been suspended indefinitely from their party jobs. Compared with the mass purges and even executions in Western parties during Stalin's era, that may be tame stuff. But in an age when the party is striving for respectability and hoping for enough votes to earn a place in a governing coalition, the suppression of internal dissent can hardly help.

Intraparty strife has also troubled some of Europe's smaller parties. In Austria, the hierarchy killed a rambunctious magazine that grew increasingly critical of Soviet dogma. In Britain, where the leadership has made public peace with Moscow but remains privately critical, a pro-Kremlin faction has recently gained strength. In tiny Finland, governed by a coalition that includes the Communists, the party leadership was forced to mollify a growing, Moscow-oriented faction by criticizing the government's economic policies. The result has been to weaken the Communists' position in the coalition.

Gruesome Festival. Though London's Observer called the Garaudy episode a "gruesome festival of discipline," it is unlikely to cause a decrease in the size of the Communist vote in European countries; much of that support comes from disaffected groups who have no other way to register their protest. Such attempts to muzzle dissenters, however, are likely to make it difficult for the Communists to register any significant increase at the polls, especially among younger voters who are turned off by political machinations.

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