Congress of Turns

The congress of Turns is the 18th national congress of the French Section of the International worker (SFIO) of the December 25th 1920 during which the French Section of International Communist was created (SFIC, future French Communist party - PCF).

During the congress, SFIO was divided into three camps.

the first, majority, gathered the partisans of adhesion to the III {{E}} Internationale communist, revolutionists (who did not share however all the 21 conditions of Lénine, which in fact were not voted at the time of the congress). They were especially the youngest leaders of the party supported by a very great number of members.

the second camp, carried out by Leon Blum and the majority of the elected officials, refused adhesion completely and wished to remain within the II {{E}} Internationale.

the third camp was carried out by a minority accepting adhesion, but only under certain conditions. Those, not being able to propose their claims, gathered with the second camp

The SFIO thus separated into two: on the one hand the “French Section of the International Communist” (SFIC, future PCF), majority with Turns (3208 votes), and on the other hand the SFIO, minority (1022 votes). However, the results obtained in-house by the Communiste S will not be reflected with the following elections, where they will obtain only scores initially much lower than those of the SFIO.

This scission was followed by that of the CGT in 1921, with the formation of the General confederation of unit work (CGTU), of communist tendency.

Declaration of Leon Blum at the end of the Congress

Will Which be the new party which you want to create? Instead of the popular will being formed at the base and tonic of degree in degree, your mode of centralization comprises the subordination of each organization to the organization which is higher to him; it is at the top a management committee on which all must depend, it is a kind of command military formulated of in top and being transmitted rank in rank, to the simple militants, the simple sections… We are convinced until the bottom of ourselves that, while you will run the adventure, it is necessary that somebody remains to keep the old house… All and sundry, even separate, will remain Socialists; despite everything, let us remain brothers whom will have separated a cruel quarrel, but a family quarrel, and that a common hearth will be able to still join together.

Declaration of Antonio Gramsci on January 4th, 1921

One cannot include/understand the direction and the range of the congress of Turns if one does not replace the fight of the tendencies within the Socialist party in the general framework of the labor movement and peasant in France. The congress of Turns is closely related to the strike of May 1st, its results testify to the provisions of the popular masses towards the directing organizations of the trade union movement, which, at the time of the strike and vis-a-vis its immediate consequences, reacted in the way and in the forms that one knows. The Committee of IIIe Internationale whose two secretaries, Oriole and Souvarine, are in prison since May under the inculpation of plot against the state security, saw the very large majority of the mandates going in favor of its motion. The Committee of IIIe Internationale, which represents the solid fundamental core of the new Communist party, did not hesitate a moment to take a clear and clear position against the socialist civils servant members of the C.G.T. and deputies who, during the strike of May, betrayed the French working class. The communist policy of IIIe Internationale had the virtue to alleviate the dissensions between “trade unionists” and “Socialists”; purged of their ideology trade unionist, the revolutionary leaders of CGT undertook an assiduous and systematic work of organization and propaganda which was not long in bearing all the more fast to mature and all the more many fruits, that the policy opportunist and treacherous of the confederal Committee had reduced trade-union manpower of two million and half of members to six hundred and thousand, and had thus given more importance to the mass of the workmen and the peasants most conscious, those which were also registered with the political party. The victory of Turns is the victory of the Committee of IIIe Internationale and it is a prelude to with the victory which the revolutionists will obtain within CGT. as of before the Congress, and which will lead them thereafter to the conquest of the Departmental union and Labor markets.

the congress of Turns has a major range, not only for the working class, but also for the country class. The fact that the majority of the rural sections voted in favor of IIIe Internationale and for a party more homogeneous and equipped with a revolutionary centralism more extremely, can be interpreted as a demonstration of impulsiveness only by those which refuse to see the extent of the crisis which breaks up the old structure of the French company. The legend of France country of small holders does not have any more any consistency. As of before the war, the disintegration of the old economic forms had reached an acute phase and frequent and massive agitations of the country class of it were the proof. The figures that here, which relate to the year 1913, precise details bring on the conditions of distribution of ownership to France, conditions which were enormously worsened by the war, insofar as the war caused a drainage of the richness towards the safes of a minority: for 1913, by representing the French total richness by the figure 1000, and the number of citizens juridically able to be owners by the same figure 1000, one had the following distribution: 470 French, either 47%, of the population, without any property, 406 French owners of 120 units, or 40%, of very small holders, 85 French, or 8,5% of the population owners of 400 units and 39 French or 4% of the population owners of 470 units. The aggravation of the general economic condition explains sufficiently the revolutionary dash of the rural classes which appeared at the time of the congress of Turns.

But the congress of Turns, in addition to its general significance within the framework of the French revolutionary movement, has a very important significance within the framework of the revolutionary movement represented by the organization of the International Communist.

to make an exact assessment on the results of the Congress, it is essential to hold account owing to the fact that the majority of the Congress does not have yet any official bond with the International Communist, that the new Party is not yet allowed in the organization of Moscow. The new Party asks to be allowed, after being separate reformists and centrists: the cut is so radical that Longuet remains out of the new Party, just as Paul Faure which had however gone to Imola in 1919, after the Congrès of Bologna, and had spun the perfect love of communist internationalism with some of the largest representatives of current Italian unitarianism.

What is most important, in the congress of Turns, it is precisely that the Party favorable to adhesion reached a completely remarkable degree of homogeneity, and that in its center, the originally communist core, the core represented by the organization centralized within the Committee of Ille Internationale, acquired a decisive preponderance.

This is why the vote of Turns is not the victory of Cachin or that of Frossard; it is the victory of the Communists, it is the victory of the revolutionary class of the workmen and the peasants of France, who are dismembering the bureaucracy trade-union, opportunist and félonne, and which, while being detached from most popular the spokesperson of the parliamentary demagogy, proved that they were resolutely decided to make their entry on the ground of the fight for the world revolution.

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