French Communist Party 1934
Source: Cahiers du Bolchevisme, 11th year, No. 14-15, July 15-Aug 1, 1934;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.
The National Conference forcefully said: “The Communist Party wants at any price to obtain the unity in action of the masses against the bourgeoisie and fascism. The Communist Party loyally and consistently practices the tactic of the united front.”
The Party Conference recalled the condemnation pronounced in the past against Treint, who passed over to counter-revolutionary Trotskyism, and for whom the tactic of the united front consisted in stealing thunder.
The National Conference condemned the splitting and anti-unitary attitude of Doriot. Like Treint in the past, Doriot considers the united front as a simple maneuver and not as a real and sincere effort for the effective organization of the anti-fascist struggle of all workers. He hopes for the Socialist Party’s refusal of our Party’s proposals for common action, while we, in the interests of the working class, hope for the realization of an agreement in the fight against fascism.
Doriot’s hypocritical phrases have as a goal the masking of his attempts to break up the Communist Party, champion and organizer of working class unity. Doriot is carrying out his anti-unitary attack at a moment when the workers are pushing for the organization of a united front, at a moment when the Socialist workers are moving closer to their Communist brothers, at a moment when the prestige of the Communist International and the Soviet Union shine more brightly than ever.
The National Conference, expressing the unanimous will of the Party, has asked the Central Committee to expel Doriot.
The Central Committee declares:
Doriot has crowned a long period of more or less hidden hostility to the Party and its leading organs with his open struggle against the Party and the Communist International.
Doriot has shown no interest in his own responsibilities. Doriot refused to accomplish the many tasks the Central Committee wanted to confide in him (the strike in Strasbourg, meeting at Issoudun against the renegade Chasseigne). He refused to speak up in the Chamber on the Gorgulov and Stavisky affairs.
Laying down the base for his fractional group, Doriot encouraged and supported Barbé, who refused to bow before a decision of the Central Committee.
Since his public aggression against the Party Doriot has ceased to participate in the meetings of the Political Bureau.
Breaking with the most elementary discipline, Doriot wrote and published numerous factums hostile to the Party and the Communist International. He transformed the Communist journal l'Emancipation into a paper full of gossip and slanders against the Party and its militants. He disorganized the activity of the Saint-Denis section and its cells. He rendered difficult, if not impossible, the presence of workers faithful to the Communist International at Party assemblies and their expression of their attachment to Communism.
Without having been authorized to do so, Doriot resigned from his functions as mayor in order to provoke an electoral campaign aimed exclusively against the Communist Party and to attempt to stir up the workers of Saint-Denis against communism. On Aril 26 he attempted through violence to prevent the hearing of the representative of the Central Committee, Marcel Cachin.
Doriot associated himself with renegades from Communism, with declared enemies of the Soviet Union in order to undertake a campaign to discredit the party and the Communist International (meetings at Rouen and Troyes).
Despite the repeated invitation of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, and despite his own declarations aimed at fooling the workers of Saint-Denis about his true activities aimed at splitting the Party, Doriot refused to go to Moscow. With his hostile response to the decision of the Executive Committee, signed with the glorious name of Divitrov, Doriot has unmasked himself as an enemy of the Communist International.
Finally, Doriot, member by right of the National Conference, advised via an express letter from the Congress that “he could have and still could develop his opinions at the tribune,” did not deign to present himself, thus showing his desire to break with the Party.
Doriot has demonstrated that he has become an element foreign to the working class and the Communist Party. He has verified the judgment of his activity taken by the Communist International. He has joined the counter-revolutionary Trotsky. He is rolling toward the abyss.
Through his activity Doriot does not assist the united front against fascism. He assists fascism.
The Central Committee of the Party, having exhausted all means of saving Doriot, ratifying the unanimous will of the Party, which demands that all obstacles to unity of action be cast aside, expels Doriot from the ranks of the Communist party.
Appeal of this decision can be made before the Party congress and before the congress of the Communist International
– The Central Committee
Expelled from the Communist Party, in 1936 Doriot founded the fascist Parti Populaire Français. He later founded the Légion des volontaires francais contre le bolchevisme – the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism – fought on the eastern front against the Red Army, was decorated by the Nazis, and was killed in 1944 during the flight of Vichy supporters before the Allied forces.