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Most of the members of the French Resistance during the Second World War were communists, so the communist party had a certain cache as being freedom fighters i

Most of the members of the French Resistance during the Second World War were communists, so the communist party had a certain cache as being freedom fighters in postwar France. Not only that but communists were at the forefront of the early union movements in most countries, as well as the fights for racial justice, womens rights and so on. So communism had a very different reputation.

mc32 4y ago
You make some valid observations about them using social wedges to drive participation. It was a means to an end --it happened in Africa, South America, Asia, etc. but yet, once communist those promises never came to fruition. In principle many of the constitutions of communist countries afford(ed) citizens more freedoms to the people than say the US constitution, but in practice that was blatantly not the case with a bit of happy time in some parts of eastern Europe for a few years before the Soviets went in to quash the threat and establish harder regimes.
- fallingfrog 4y ago
  I would counter that by saying that despots have existed all through human history, and have always cloaked themselves in claims of their power coming from god, or them being actual gods, or something like that, so if the batch of despots that cropped up after ww2 used communism as their justification it’s hardly surprising- that was the set ideas floating around at the time that could be used to make them appear virtuous. And of course, by doing so they could get Soviet funding. Of course, in places like Cambodia, atrocities did take place that were really inspired by some demented but sincere interpretations of communism. I would say, 20th century communism’s great failure is that it attempts to abolish politics itself by trying to create a utopia where nobody ever disagrees with one another. This is impossible, and totalitarian by definition.
  - mc32 4y ago
    That explains the regimes coming to power via deceptive means and methods -all par for the course... but it doesn't explain the infatuation by intellectuals from the early to late mid XX century. It's like someone seeing Mussolini and being captivated by the act and not digging further.
    - picsao 4y ago
    - WitCanStain 4y ago
      I'd wager that much of that is because people are susceptible to be lured by the idea of strength. If you identify severe problems with how the world is, even an oppressive government like what the bolsheviks created that claims to solve them might seem like a ray of hope, and you might be willing to look past a lot of horrid things / convince yourself that they're not real so long as you believe those fundamental problems with the organisation of labour and wealth are being solved. It is worth noting that this infatuation was by no means universal - Camus and Sartre famously had a split over Soviet gulags, and Orwell consistently criticised the Soviet Union's authoritarianism despite both being socialists. The fact that only centralised, authoritarian socialist governments managed to take power in the first half of the 20th century has probably done irreparable damage to the idea of communism. If more moderate, decentralised, or liberal (as opposed to authoritarian) governments had managed to take power (such as in Spain) people might not be as quick to dismiss the (in my opinion, very real) structural issues in capitalist systems, and we might live in a better world today because of it - or perhaps that is just my infatuation with the counterfactual!
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      All of your critiques come with the benefit of historical hindsight, and being completely detached from the dire circumstances that allowed demagogues or populist movements to flourish. You are seeing things through the lens of over a century of world history with which you shape your views; but this is the opposite of myopia, you see the big picture so largely you are unable to consider localized views in context. To whit, Mussolini, who incidentally was a socialist before he became a fascist, rose to power in a time when Italy was in a state of crisis and discontent. This was a decade full of national revanchist ressentiment compounded by the economic devastation of the Great Depression. In that era, strongmen of not only far left or far right, but liberal center- consider FDR being the only American president to break the two-term precedence and be reelected to four terms- rose to power. Surely that should tell you people in the era had very different worldviews, concerns, and knowledge from yourself?
JPLeRouzic 4y ago
> Most of the members of the French Resistance during the Second World War were communists I am an old French (65yo) but what I understand is that statement is only propaganda if only because De Gaule's army was much larger. Anyway "resistance" was not a well structured organisation even De Gaulle's organisation, it was sparse at the beginning (1941) and a lot of people declared themselve as "résistant" after the D day. Many people who actually did resistance acts did not claim themselve to be "résistants". See [0] "Before the Liberation day, we were 2,500 in the maquis. Five or six days later, we were around 10,000" At "liberation", people lived in a state of terror, armed young men roamed the cities. Properties were stolen. Many women were shamed, shaved and raped by those pseudo resistants [2]. Neighbors denounced neighbors for profit. Again see [0] "“There were people killed, one wonders why. Sometimes out of jealousy or revenge. To take their wives... It's easy when you have a gun in your hand, if you're mentally imbalanced. »" US forces put the number of "summary executions" following liberation at 80,000. The French Minister of the Interior in March 1945 claimed that the number executed was 105,000 [1]. [0] https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2001/08/26/215395-la-terrible-humiliation-des-femmes-tondues.html https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2001/08/26/215395-la-terrib... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89puration_l%C3%A9gale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89puration_l%C3%A9gale [2] https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/french-female-collaborator-punished-head-shaved-publicly-mark-1944/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/french-female-collaborator-...
- wikfwikf 4y ago
  > it was sparse at the beginning (1941) and a lot of people declared themselve as "résistant" after the D day This isn't the refutation you think it is. Communists and fellow travelers were much more prevalent in the resistance earlier on (but after Operation Barbarossa!). There are a considerable number of French communist martyrs commemorated in French towns and public places. Most of these died during 1942 and 1943, when resistance was against overwhelming odds. Towards the end of the war, there were fewer actions against the Nazi occupation and more towards collaborators. This is however because in many parts of France, the occupation simply was unable to exercise more than a show of control, because of the success of the resistance. I am very surprised that as an old French person you aren't aware of the significant role played by French communists in the resistance. Have you heard of Vercors? Colonel Fabien? France d'abord? Whatever you may think of communism in general these are established historical facts. The mainstreaming of the PCF after the war, in contrast to other places in Europe, is specifically related to recognition of their heroism against the occupation. (The same could be said about the mainstream position of freemasonry in French society.) In fact, the strength and popularity of the communist controlled organizations and the risk of a Tito-style regime was a main reason that the UK and US (reluctantly) gave their full backing to de Gaulle towards the end of the war.
baud147258 4y ago
> Most of the members of the French Resistance during the Second World War were communists Though many of the communists followed Moscow's order and only started resisting after 1941 and Germany's attack on the URSS; before that Moscow's message to French communists was more of collaboration with its nazi ally.
- mc32 4y ago
  The Molotov/Ribbentrop pact kind of dictated a lot of the pre Barbarossa partitionings of Europe.

mc32 4y ago

You make some valid observations about them using social wedges to drive participation. It was a means to an end --it happened in Africa, South America, Asia, etc. but yet, once communist those promises never came to fruition. In principle many of the constitutions of communist countries afford(ed) citizens more freedoms to the people than say the US constitution, but in practice that was blatantly not the case with a bit of happy time in some parts of eastern Europe for a few years before the Soviets went in to quash the threat and establish harder regimes.

fallingfrog 4y ago
I would counter that by saying that despots have existed all through human history, and have always cloaked themselves in claims of their power coming from god, or them being actual gods, or something like that, so if the batch of despots that cropped up after ww2 used communism as their justification it’s hardly surprising- that was the set ideas floating around at the time that could be used to make them appear virtuous. And of course, by doing so they could get Soviet funding. Of course, in places like Cambodia, atrocities did take place that were really inspired by some demented but sincere interpretations of communism. I would say, 20th century communism’s great failure is that it attempts to abolish politics itself by trying to create a utopia where nobody ever disagrees with one another. This is impossible, and totalitarian by definition.
- mc32 4y ago
  That explains the regimes coming to power via deceptive means and methods -all par for the course... but it doesn't explain the infatuation by intellectuals from the early to late mid XX century. It's like someone seeing Mussolini and being captivated by the act and not digging further.
  - picsao 4y ago
  - WitCanStain 4y ago
    I'd wager that much of that is because people are susceptible to be lured by the idea of strength. If you identify severe problems with how the world is, even an oppressive government like what the bolsheviks created that claims to solve them might seem like a ray of hope, and you might be willing to look past a lot of horrid things / convince yourself that they're not real so long as you believe those fundamental problems with the organisation of labour and wealth are being solved. It is worth noting that this infatuation was by no means universal - Camus and Sartre famously had a split over Soviet gulags, and Orwell consistently criticised the Soviet Union's authoritarianism despite both being socialists. The fact that only centralised, authoritarian socialist governments managed to take power in the first half of the 20th century has probably done irreparable damage to the idea of communism. If more moderate, decentralised, or liberal (as opposed to authoritarian) governments had managed to take power (such as in Spain) people might not be as quick to dismiss the (in my opinion, very real) structural issues in capitalist systems, and we might live in a better world today because of it - or perhaps that is just my infatuation with the counterfactual!
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    All of your critiques come with the benefit of historical hindsight, and being completely detached from the dire circumstances that allowed demagogues or populist movements to flourish. You are seeing things through the lens of over a century of world history with which you shape your views; but this is the opposite of myopia, you see the big picture so largely you are unable to consider localized views in context. To whit, Mussolini, who incidentally was a socialist before he became a fascist, rose to power in a time when Italy was in a state of crisis and discontent. This was a decade full of national revanchist ressentiment compounded by the economic devastation of the Great Depression. In that era, strongmen of not only far left or far right, but liberal center- consider FDR being the only American president to break the two-term precedence and be reelected to four terms- rose to power. Surely that should tell you people in the era had very different worldviews, concerns, and knowledge from yourself?

JPLeRouzic 4y ago

> Most of the members of the French Resistance during the Second World War were communists I am an old French (65yo) but what I understand is that statement is only propaganda if only because De Gaule's army was much larger. Anyway "resistance" was not a well structured organisation even De Gaulle's organisation, it was sparse at the beginning (1941) and a lot of people declared themselve as "résistant" after the D day. Many people who actually did resistance acts did not claim themselve to be "résistants". See [0] "Before the Liberation day, we were 2,500 in the maquis. Five or six days later, we were around 10,000" At "liberation", people lived in a state of terror, armed young men roamed the cities. Properties were stolen. Many women were shamed, shaved and raped by those pseudo resistants [2]. Neighbors denounced neighbors for profit. Again see [0] "“There were people killed, one wonders why. Sometimes out of jealousy or revenge. To take their wives... It's easy when you have a gun in your hand, if you're mentally imbalanced. »" US forces put the number of "summary executions" following liberation at 80,000. The French Minister of the Interior in March 1945 claimed that the number executed was 105,000 [1]. [0] https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2001/08/26/215395-la-terrible-humiliation-des-femmes-tondues.html https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2001/08/26/215395-la-terrib... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89puration_l%C3%A9gale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89puration_l%C3%A9gale [2] https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/french-female-collaborator-punished-head-shaved-publicly-mark-1944/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/french-female-collaborator-...

wikfwikf 4y ago
> it was sparse at the beginning (1941) and a lot of people declared themselve as "résistant" after the D day This isn't the refutation you think it is. Communists and fellow travelers were much more prevalent in the resistance earlier on (but after Operation Barbarossa!). There are a considerable number of French communist martyrs commemorated in French towns and public places. Most of these died during 1942 and 1943, when resistance was against overwhelming odds. Towards the end of the war, there were fewer actions against the Nazi occupation and more towards collaborators. This is however because in many parts of France, the occupation simply was unable to exercise more than a show of control, because of the success of the resistance. I am very surprised that as an old French person you aren't aware of the significant role played by French communists in the resistance. Have you heard of Vercors? Colonel Fabien? France d'abord? Whatever you may think of communism in general these are established historical facts. The mainstreaming of the PCF after the war, in contrast to other places in Europe, is specifically related to recognition of their heroism against the occupation. (The same could be said about the mainstream position of freemasonry in French society.) In fact, the strength and popularity of the communist controlled organizations and the risk of a Tito-style regime was a main reason that the UK and US (reluctantly) gave their full backing to de Gaulle towards the end of the war.

baud147258 4y ago

> Most of the members of the French Resistance during the Second World War were communists Though many of the communists followed Moscow's order and only started resisting after 1941 and Germany's attack on the URSS; before that Moscow's message to French communists was more of collaboration with its nazi ally.

mc32 4y ago
The Molotov/Ribbentrop pact kind of dictated a lot of the pre Barbarossa partitionings of Europe.