To Fuse or Not to Fuse

To fuse or not to fuse with the Communist Party, that was the critical question before the French Socialist Party. The answer to that question would help shape the answer to a bigger question: would the reorganization of western Europe be dominated by Labor's totalitarian (Communist) or its democratic (Socialist) wing?

There were weighty precedents. In Norway the Labor Party (Norway's biggest) and the Communist Party (which once polled 7% of the national vote) agreed to fuse. In Italy the Socialist Party has voted for fusion with the Communist Party (see below). In Berlin, Socialists and Communists, traditional enemies, have formed a joint committee (TIME, July 9) to rehabilitate Germany.

Sliced Cucumber. There was also the recent exhortation of Maurice Thorez, French Communist Party Secretary: "If Socialists and Communists continue quarreling, instead of uniting, we will be heading for catastrophe." The 850 Socialist delegates (with more than 10,000 mandates), holding their 37th Congress in Paris' huge, dim Salle de la Mutualite, thought differently. For five days they debated the issue.

Arguments continued at lunch--over a typical Paris meal: one or two slices of tomato and cucumber, a slice of codfish with boiled potatoes, cheap red wine and "cafe national" (a brew that suggests many things, none of them coffee). Cloudy disputation was further clouded by the fumes of Gauloises Bleues cigarets.

Onetime Premier Leon Blum made it clear that socialism need not beg for allies. Said he: "Socialism is the master of the present hour . . ." (thunderous applause).

Primitive Faith. Daniel Meyer, the Party's secretary general, spoke less abstractly. Said he: "We do not want fusion born of political opportunism. The Communist Party is still closely bound to Moscow; it carries out Moscow instructions with blind and primitive faith. Union between Socialists and Communists will be feasible only after Soviet Russia has become a member of a true system of international cooperation."

When the Congress finally voted, it was 274 mandates for fusion, 10,112 against. But with Gallic courtesy (and irony) the Congress decided that the fusion issue might be reconsidered whenever the French Communist Party fulfilled "certain conditions." The most important condition: rupture with Moscow.

Professional Haste. The Congress was attended by delegates of Europe's governing socialist parties. Most notable: Italy's Vice Premier Pietro Nenni (an ardent fusionist) and the chairman of Britain's Labor Party, Professor Harold J. Laski.

Professor Laski urged fusion of a different kind--the union of France and Britain. In London, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin promptly declared that Professor Laski spoke for himself, not for the Labor Party. In Paris, Professor Laski hastily declared that he had not meant political fusion, just joint economic undertakings.

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