Democracy or Bonapartism in Europe – A Reply to Pierre Frank After WWII, the leadership of the Fourth International were still repeating old and out-dated ideas. Among such leaders was Pierre Frank, one of the leaders of the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI), the French section of the International. He wrote an article which argued that in Western Europe, there had been established only Bonapartist governments, ie 'Governments by the Sword', denying, in other words, that 'normal' capitalist democracy existed. Ted Grant's reply was a devastating critique of Frank's muddled and un-Marxist approach.
From: Perspectives in Britain This is an extract from a resolution presented on behalf of the leadership to the RCP conference in 1946. Like the other documents dealing with Western Europe as a whole, it corrected the previous perspective of the RCP, of an immediate economic crisis after the war. The resolution went on to outline a perspective for British capitalism of 'relative stability', which, at a later stage, would give way to 'a catastrophe greater than she has experienced in the whole of her history.'
Economic Perspectives 1946 In the immediate post-war period, the longevity of the postwar boom could not have been anticipated. What was an issue within the Trotskyist movement was whether or not there would be any economic recovery at all. The material of the British Revolutionary Communist Party, and particularly the writings of Ted Grant, argued that there was a temporary political stabilisation in Western Europe, because of the influence of the social democratic and Stalinist leaderships, acting as a brake on the workers' movement. The political recovery of capitalism provided the political basis for, and was itself further underpinned by, economic recovery.
