What do Stalinists do when they’re a minority in the Party, and they want to oppose pluralist democracy and internal dissent on the grounds of loyalty to ‘democratic centralism’?
Well the French Communist Party ended a chaotic weekend with just this problem. They re-elected Marie-George Buffet as their National secretary, the architect of reforms which allow among other things, several candidates for internal elections, more compromises with the socialists and other heresies for a Party that refused to condemn Stalin until… er, last year, I think. These are the guys that thought Leonid Brezhnev was a crypto-liberal!
At the last minute a revolt by the anti-democrats was averted by persuading them to withdraw their opposition candidates for the leadership election which they oppose on the grounds of revolutionary discipline. Embarrassingly, France’s major news website doesn’t carry a single comment on this story after more than a day: iron discipline or sublime indifference?
What ‘the comrades’ need isn’t a Marie-George Buffet, but a Warren Buffett.