Belgium: The Succesful Belgian Workers’ Party
October 2021
Author Yu Haiqing is proffesor in the Marxism Academy of CASS, Beijing
The Belgian Workers’ Party ( PTB) is a Belgian Marxist-communist political party. It is the largest undisputed radical left party in Belgium . It is one of the few political parties that operates nationwide in Belgium , with most other parties operating only in the Dutch-speaking or French-speaking regions. The rise of the Belgian Workers’ Party (BWP), as one important “phenomenon” of the rise of Western communist parties which reverses the current trend related to Western communist parties, is worth our consideration. Why is it that the Belgian Workers’ Party, which is faced with similar external environment, and is far inferior to many traditional parties in the western communist movement in terms of historical inheritance, organizational scale and social foundation, has been able to rise to prominence in a short period of time? Throughout our article, we can find that the strategy and practice of combining “principle” and “flexibility” have played a key role in pushing the Workers’ Party to make a historic leap forward. The success of the Workers’ Party is obviously an important revelation to the Western communist parties, which are confronted with the confusion in their tactical choices. Taking the evolution of theoretical strategies as a clue, the Western communist parties in the past 30 years can basically be divided into two distinct development paths, namely, “traditional” and “modernized” paths.
The former is represented by some relatively radical communist parties, which have inherited more traditional socialist theories, with strong ideological coloring and chosen a prominent identity as the “left wing of the left wing political parties’ spectrum”.
The latter group, on the other hand, have made more new ideological and theoretical developments and changes, and their degree of transformation is more remarkable. However, looking to the practice of the past 30 years, “polarization”, between these two development paths by the communist parties have become more and more prominent and more and more problems have emerged. The number of communist parties trying to balance these two extreme paths seems to be quite small. The “traditional” type of communist parties are becoming more and more rigid, dogmatic and programmatic in their thinking, and their “adherence” to principles is tending to become more and more “stubborn”, sticking to traditional definitions and they detach themselves from reality, and in some matters concerning the future of the Party’s development, there is a tendency for it to become more and more rigid and dogmatic. On some important issues concerning the future of the Party’s development, this type of Communist Party is unable to make corresponding adjustments and changes in the light of changes in the environment of the times. On the other hand, the “modernized” communist party type is too flexible in terms of strategy and tactics, overemphasizing the practicality of theories, often compromising too much when making strategic and tactical adjustments, and not maintaining enough of its own characteristics, resulting in the weakening of some of the Party’s original distinctive features. Judging from the results of the development of these two paths, the parties concerned have either found it difficult to break the “ceiling” of support, or have suffered a serious loss of traditional voters, with their power and influence shrinking, and the space for their survival in regional and national politics are becoming narrower and becoming more marginalized. If the Western Communist Party wants to get out of its predicament and make a difference, it must make new explorations and strive to realize new breakthroughs in its theoretical strategy. The practice of the Belgian Workers’ Party in recent years has provided a new model for the Western Communist Party, which is faced with the perplexity of making strategic choices, to refer to and learn from. The combination of “principle” and “flexibility” advocated by the Belgium Labor Party is not a new idea or a new proposition, but has been practiced and successfully applied at different times and stages in the history of international communism and world socialism. The significance of the theory and practice of the Belgian Workers’ Party is that it has taken a “new” way out of the dilemma of the “polarized” strategic choice of the Western communist movement. This “new” path of the Belgian Workers’ Party is based on a profound summary of the lessons of its own development, a creative interpretation of “principledness” and “flexibility” in the light of the changing social environment, and the formulation of a series of effective strategies and tactics. Through the formulation of a series of effective strategies, it has effectively avoided the two extreme tendencies we see in the current Western communist movement, thus we can say that Belgian Workers’ Party has realized a balance between adherence to principles and achieved the flexible application of tactics.
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