Nobody But Us Democrats

In mid-November Enrico Berlinguer, leader of the Italian Communist Party, and Georges Marchais, leader of the French Party, issued a joint declaration. The text is enough to convict Thomas Jefferson of authoritarian deviations. “All the liberties-which are the fruit of the great democratic-bourgeois revolutions as of the great popular struggles of this century, must be guaranteed and developed; and thus, the liberty of thought and expression, of the press, of meeting and association, the right to demonstrate, the free movement of persons inside and outside their own country, the inviolability of private life, of religious liberties, the total freedom of expression of currents of thought, and of every philosophical, cultural, and artistic opinion. The French and Italian Communists favor the plurality of parties, the right of opposition parties to exist and to act . . . the democratic functioning of the state, and the independence of justice.” Who could ask for anything more?

The declaration sets out what is called among Marxists “the parliamentary road to socialism [i.e., Communism].” The Times summed itupasa “declaration of the French and Italian parties that each would set its own strategy and seek power through the Western democratic system.”

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James Burnham

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In mid-November Enrico Berlinguer, leader of the Italian Communist Party, and Georges Marchais, leader of the French Party, issued a joint declaration. The text is enough to convict Thomas Jefferson of authoritarian deviations. “All the liberties-which are the fruit of the great democratic-bourgeois revolutions as of the great popular struggles of this century, must be guaranteed and developed; and thus, the liberty of thought and expression, of the press, of meeting and association, the right to demonstrate, the free movement of persons inside and outside their own country, the inviolability of private life, of religious liberties, the total freedom of expression of currents of thought, and of every philosophical, cultural, and artistic opinion. The French and Italian Communists favor the plurality of parties, the right of opposition parties to exist and to act . . . the democratic functioning of the state, and the independence of justice.” Who could ask for anything more?

The declaration sets out what is called among Marxists “the parliamentary road to socialism [i.e., Communism].” The Times summed itupasa “declaration of the French and Italian parties that each would set its own strategy and seek power through the Western democratic system.”