Belgium: Belgian Communist Party’s New Exploration of the Socialist Path in the 21st Century
October 2024
Author Guo Taiying is from the Institute of Contemporary Socialism, Shandong University.
The 21st century is a century of change and development. The survival and development environment of the Communist Party in capitalist countries has undergone tremendous and profound changes. After a century of vicissitudes, the Communist Party of Belgium decided to regroup after experiencing the heavy blow of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: adhere to the theoretical reform of the socialist direction, based on the world situation, national conditions, and party conditions, seek socialist alternatives on the basis of criticizing the capitalist system, and re-interpret the basic connotation of socialism; strive to expand the party’s political influence, social influence and international influence through political participation, mass line and inter-party cooperation, and strive to explore a socialist road suitable for the party and the country’s national conditions. From the actual situation, the reform exploration of the Communist Party of Belgium has achieved little results, and its marginalization trend in the Belgian political arena cannot be reversed for the time being. Future development still faces severe challenges.
[Keywords] Belgian Communist Party, capitalism, socialism, international communist movement
Founded in 1921, the Communist Party of Belgium has a history of more than 100 years. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the Communist Party of Belgium has held several congresses, actively explored a socialist path that suits the country’s reality, achieved new developments, and presented new characteristics. The Communist Party of Belgium is an important part of the Belgian workers’ movement and the international communist movement. Exploring its theoretical characteristics and practical models is of great reference significance for analyzing the development, evolution, rise and fall of the Communist parties in Western capitalist countries.
According to the struggle goals and characteristics of the Belgian Communist Party in different periods, its development process can be roughly divided into the following three stages.
1. 1921 to the end of World War II: Initial Exploration, Establishment and Growth in Revolutionary Struggle
The establishment of the Communist Party of Belgium is the product of the development of the international communist movement. Similar to most communist parties in Western Europe, the October Revolution in Russia and the establishment of the Soviet socialist system created important external conditions for the birth of the party. From a historical perspective, the establishment of the Communist Party of Belgium is the product of internal conflicts and struggles within the Belgian left-wing political parties.
From 1916, left-wing groups of the Belgian Labor Party emerged and became active in the Young Socialist Guard in Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, Liège, and Charleroi. With the October Revolution as a beacon, they gradually identified with the Marxist position and regrouped. In 1920, the Belgian Communist Party, which defended the position of the Second Congress of the Communist International, was established. There were a few hesitant people within the Belgian Labor Party, namely the “few socialists”, who were called “friends of the exploited”. During the war, they insisted on holding a “peace conference” with the German Social Democrats in Stockholm and were not enthusiastic about the October Revolution. They actually wanted to return to the pre-war program of the Belgian Labor Party and were typical centrists, that is, radical criticism of the leaders, always using the excuse of “not losing touch with the masses” to try to fill the gap of social democracy, but failed to come up with any viable solutions. In 1921, they finally broke with the Belgian Labor Party. However, they believed that the Belgian Communist Party at that time was not a party of mass action, but a sectarian political group composed of four or five propaganda groups, which was more anarchist than communist. In the first years after the end of World War I, the differences between the leadership of Belgian socialism and its left opposition and the majority of the left opposition focused on the issue of government cooperation and the ministerial system. The left minority, led by Joseph Jacquemotte, the national secretary of the Employees’ Union, strongly opposed the participation of socialists in the coalition government to guide the affairs of the country. As the internal differences between the majority and the minority intensified, on September 3, 1921, the left wing of the Workers’ Party, led by Jospeh Jacquemotte, merged with other communist groups led by War Van Overstraeten to form the new Belgian Communist Party.
The Communist Party of Belgium is a typical political party composed of young radicals. As a marginal small party with less than 1,000 members, it has been struggling to survive in the cracks since its establishment, affected by domestic and international situations. There are three main forms of its early struggle: First, actively participate in the country’s parliamentary elections and win votes. The Communist Party of Belgium only won 1.64% of the votes (34,149 votes) in the 1925 legislative elections, but in the 1926 municipal elections, it achieved outstanding results in Brussels, Liege, Charleroi and other places.
Nationwide, the Communist Party of Belgium won a total of 66,000 votes and 25 city council seats. Second, actively carry out social movements through the Communist Youth League. The Communist Youth League (hereinafter referred to as the “Communist Youth League”) played a considerable role in the strike in 1932, enabling the Communist Party of Belgium to establish its first fortress. Young militants acted as liaisons between pickets to coordinate actions. In 1932, the Communist Youth League organized a bicycle parade in Brussels, and even received support from the French Communist Party in the north. The Communist Youth also successfully carried out a pioneering experiment with “red” pickets with the Socialists, when there was no connection between the Belgian Communist Party and the Socialist Party. This movement tripled the membership of the Belgian Communist Party.
Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. Due to the mistakes of the Communist Youth and especially the harsh repression of the police and company management, the Communists were unable to consolidate their gains. Their publications were confiscated in many raids and as many as 187 activists were arrested, including many leaders. The third was to actively carry out the underground struggle against fascism. From 1934, it was the reorientation towards anti-fascism and the unified line of the People’s Front that enabled it to rise again by achieving large-scale successes.
During World War II, the first and central task of the Communist Party of Belgium was to support the united front of all patriotic peoples and promote the liberation of the country. Belgian Communists were the main force in the strike wave of the 1930s, the anti-Nazi resistance movement in World War II, the fight against the Belgian monarchy and the repression of the workers’ movement. During the German invasion, the Communist Party of Belgium was the only party in Belgium that never stopped its activities from the day of occupation to the liberation of the country and maintained its organizational structure intact. During this period, communist ideology was defined as a crime by Germany, and under German oppression, the Communist Party of Belgium went underground. In 1936, the Communist Party of Belgium led workers in a strike to fight for the right to paid vacations. In the same year, with the military support of the German and Italian fascists, Franco in Spain launched a civil war against the Popular Front government (Communist, Socialist and Republican). Many members of the Communist Party of Belgium joined the International Brigades and even held leadership positions in them. Based on these experiences, during the Nazi German occupation of Belgium in 1940, the Communist Party of Belgium seized the opportunity to organize the first resistance movement. In May 1941, the leader of the Belgian Communist Party, Julien Lahout, organized an anti-occupation strike of 100,000 workers, disrupting Nazi Germany’s armament production. During the war, the Communists formulated a political line to defeat fascism and Nazism, but did not formulate a political line on how to gain power in Belgium after expelling Nazi Germany, and failed to seize the opportunity to rise up. At the time of liberation in September 1944, the resistance organization led by the Belgian Communist Party had as many as 40,000 people, while the government gendarmes returning to Belgium from London had only more than 7,000 people.
The resistance fighters opposed the government’s order to disarm the guerrillas, refusing to disarm and demonstrating in the streets of Brussels, but the party leadership did not oppose the order. This period of struggle was particularly difficult and the losses were heavy, with about 5,500 militants sent to concentration camps and more than 2,000 killed.
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