Belgian Communism in the Light of Its Vanishing (1976-1994)

In the 1987 national elections, the Communist Party of Belgium (PCB-KPB) lost all parliamentary representation for the first time since 1925. This failure reflects the accelerated collapse of Belgian Communism in just a decade. The events of 1989 and 1991 in Central and Eastern Europe and in the USSR will then confirm the de facto disappearance of the PCB-KPB. The article goes back to the roots of the decline of a medium-size Communist Party, but showed political and social relevance from 1925 to 1985. The decline is due to the industrial and socio-demographic dramatic changes. The paper also tackles the political choices made in the seventies and eighties to understand it. In particular, it embraces the internal paralysis of the party faced with the challenges posed to all the European Communist Parties at this time, and its inability to deal with them.


Introduction
As of 1976, the year of the municipal elections in Belgium, in the early nineties, the Communist Party of Belgium (Particommuniste de Belgique-Kommunistische Partij van België, PCB-KPB) experienced a considerable fall in its aura, to the point of losing, as it was, any electoral, political, cultural and trade union influence after 1989. During this period, its falling-off had a timeline that was not particularly original for most European Communist Parties (Delwit, 2016).
In a nutshell, the life of the Belgian Communists can be divided into three phases. The first involved both electoral stability and the introduction into the in electoral terms but could also be observed on the Belgian social scene, dominated as it was by the classic struggle between employers' and trade union organisations but also by a struggle for influence between trade unions of socialist leanings and trade unions with a Christian democratic orientation (Spitaels, 1974).
Moreover, the PCB-KPB also showed a degree of originality in its relations Table 1. Evolution of the number of seats at the Chamber captured by the PCB-KPB (1921-1991

The Belgian Communist Dynamic Until 1989
1) The electoral point of view: from reaffirmation to vanishing Four national elections took place in Belgium in the 1970s. All showed a long-known reality for the Belgian communists. PCB-KPB was evanescent in the Dutch-speaking part of the country. It posted a convincing score only in the 1946 elections and, to a lesser extent already, in 1949 (See Table 2).
On the other hand, it could boast a degree of consistency in Brussels and Wallonia. In Wallonia, the Communist Party was relatively stable. It reached 5.9%, 5.8%, 5.3% and 5.8% respectively in the 1971, 1974, 1977 and 1978 legisla-tive elections. In the district that comprises the capital Brussels, it achieved 2.8%, 4%, 2.7% and 3%. In Flanders, as we have said, the PCB-KPB had a much more limited scope and at these four elections it scored only 1.59%, 1.59%, 1.23% and 1.90%.
In the early eighties it suffered a sudden slump. In the 1981 legislative elections, the Communist Party had to endure a significant decline: it kept only two members of Parliament and one senator. Moreover, through the "apparentement" technical measure (Pilet, 2007), its two most important representatives, Louis Van Geyt of Brussels, the party president, and Marcel Levaux of Liège, were dismissed in favor of less well-known personalities, namely Jacques Nagels of Brabantwallon and Daniel Fedrigo of Huy.
The Communist Party showed a penetration which remained significant only in the areas of old industrial settlements: Borinage, the industrial belt of Liège, Charleroi and its periphery. Brussels could be added, even if it has begun a deep tertiarisation process. In Flanders and the rest of the Walloon territory, the 1 In his book, President Louis Van Geyt attributes this initial reluctance towards the term to an allergy on his and Vice-President Claude Renard's parts: "We have committed blunders. For example, we have hesitated for too long to openly claim Eurocommunism persuasion. We were probably practicing a more Eurocommunist policy than in other CPs. But we had an allergy to that term, as it was not clear to us. On this point, I particularly lay the blame on the Van Geyt-Renard tandem" (Van Geyt, 2015: p. 340). Open Journal of Political Science Generally speaking, local elections tend to be a complex appointment for a medium and small party. Drawing up lists at local level and collecting signatures in order to be able to submit them, all are very difficult tasks, often unattainable in municipalities of limited size from a socio-demographic point of view. Moreover, winning one or more seats is complex since, in the distribution of seats, it is the Imperiali divider that is used rather than the D'hondt divider, applied in national elections (Delwit, 2018: p. 188). Therefore, the Communist Party is only capable of partially "covering" Belgian territory. Its presence is only guaranteed in large municipalities or areas where it has significant presence. In the light of this element, its presence in Flanders is extremely limited as well as in the boroughs of the Namur and Luxembourg provinces in Wallonia. Above all, its presence is dwindling. In 1976, the Communist Party presented a list in 108 of the 589 Belgian municipalities (see Figure 2). Six years later, the Communists were only present in 76 localities (see Figure 3). And in 1988, it fell to 66 (See Figure 4).
At the same time, as already mentioned, its electoral performance declined   significantly, as shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4. In 1976, Communist lists exceeded 5% of the votes in forty-five communes and 10% in twenty. In 1988, the 5% mark was exceeded in only 28 cases and the 10% figure in only 11 municipalities.  In 1988, the fall was drastic. The 5% threshold was surpassed in only fifteen localities and the 10% mark in four (See Figure 4).
Logically, this tumble seriously impacted the number of local councillors who won. It stood at seventy-nine in 1976, fell to fifty-five in 1982 and twenty-three in 1988 (see Table 3). In twelve years, therefore, the party lost most of the experience accumulated in local management and the contribution of reference political figures for the electoral segments they targeted.
2) The evolution of the Communist Party's membership since 1975 The evolution in the number of party members was in line with the electoral performance curve. The Communist Party reached its membership pinnacle at the Liberation. In 1945, the PCB-KPB had 88,000 members. The beginning of the Cold War, the normalisation of political life in Belgium (Conway, 2015) and the PCB-KPB's sectarianism quickly caused this total to fall. It was stuck in the ten and fifteen thousand range until the early seventies. From this moment on, the Communist Party recorded a slow but continuous decline in an overall context, marked by a general decrease of Party membership in Europe (Delwit, 2011;van Haute & Gauja, 2015).
In 1972, the PCB-KPB's numbers fell below ten thousand; in 1978, below nine thousand; and in 1981 below eight thousand. In three years, the party suffered a marked decline from 7583 members (1981) to 5528 (1984). The 1985 electoral failure, confirmed in 1987, reduced the Communist Party to a very modest size relatively to this indicator. Already in 1987, the PCB-KPB boasted only 3372 members (see Table 4).  On the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Communist Party retained around 2500 members in Wallonia and 500 in Brussels. For the most part, these were long-standing registered members, for whom departure was not an option.
But its potential driving forces had deserted the party and no renewal dynamics had been set in motion. In 1987, a survey conducted by the party on its affiliates' profiles in Wallonia revealed that only a little over 10% of them were at least 30 years of age. On the other hand, 43% were 56 years old or older at the time, and 15% had reached their seventies (see Table 5). The collapse of communist regimes and affiliates' age structure made it possible to grasp that, by the yardstick of this indicator, the party had de facto disappeared. According to the calculations of delegates present at the Saint-Vaast congress held in March 1995, only some 1080 members remained in the mid-1990s. Only a few federations in Hainaut or Liège still were large enough (see Table 6). At the celebration the party organized in October 1996 for its seventy-fifth anniversary, it claimed a little less than 2000 members. Actually, at that date, membership was in the order of six hundred, spread mainly over a few towns in Hainaut and the province of Liège. In Brussels, and in the provinces of Namur and Luxembourg, the party existed only on paper.

Reasons for an Accelerated Decline
Whether we observe it on the basis of the electoral indicator or by the yardstick of membership trends, the Communist Party posted a major decline in its influence at the beginning of the 1980s. How can we grapple with this sudden breakdown that continued throughout the 1980s? Let us first remember this was not unique among European Communist parties. In truth, most of them recorded the same type of dynamics.

1) The emergence of another socio-professional world
With regard more specifically to the Communist Party of Belgium, let us pinpoint two major drivers of this changeover. The first is socio-demographic. In its history, the PCB-KPB had mainly established itself in the working-class Walloon basins and in the Brussels white-and blue-collar environment. Its presence and influence was affected by two important developments affecting these basins.
Indeed, they went through major economic restructuring. Until the early 1950s, Belgium's economic driver was mainly located in the south of the country. But shortly after WWII, the situation changed. Some key sectors were affected in the 1950s by European competition from a modernised tool and by changes in the energy sector. Coal mines in Wallonia were the hardest-hit.
In the 1960s and 1970s, mines dwindled and with them a community in which the Communist Party had conquered its strongest social and political positions.
The same applies to the textile sector. Simultaneously, a partial intra-Belgian  While the service economy and the tertiary sector were progressing noticeably, the Communist Party remained largely attached to the industrial world, which was in full decline. Members' socio-professional origins during the 1980s showed this considerable gap between the social composition of the party's affiliates and the changing reality of the Belgian society's workforce.
Of course, the results we have calculated require a degree of caution. First, because categorization does not take members' ages into account. We therefore do not know whether the members interviewed were still active at the time of the survey. In addition, the totals were obtained from the information provided by members on their membership stub, where nine choices were offered. This sometimes led to discrepancies between the subjectively experienced status and reality, especially regarding members who had worked in more than one occupation. Half of the Walloon PCB-KPB members belonged to it (49.6%). If, to the category "private sector workers", we add that of "public sector workers", which then represented about 10%, we obtained a total of 60% of workers. Such over-representation of the working class highlights the under-representation in the other categories, especially among employees (See Table 8).
2) The PCB-KPB and the useful voting  It is in this context that the political and social organisations with socialist leanings tightened their links to break this Right-wing coalition government. On the eve of the 1985 legislative elections, the Socialist Party and the Walloon interregional FGTB signed an agreement defining a minimum programme to be implemented in a government with socialist participation (Arcq, 1987: p. 16-17).
Although formally independent, the Socialist Party and the FGTB thus joined  (Chauvier, 1973: p. 37;Maerten, 2005), and in the communist pockets in Flanders.
Provinces Federations 1971Federations 1972Federations 1973Federations 1974Federations 1975Federations 1976Federations 1977Federations 1978Federations 1979Federations 1980Federations 1981Federations 1982Federations 1983Federations 1984Federations 1985Federations 1986Federations 1987Federations 1988Federations 1989  The Communist Party was thus paralysed by internal divisions, personal bickering and the refusal-more precisely, unwillingness-to go down a clear path. More than any other, President Louis Van Geyt embodied this imperative of a middle path between increasingly distant orientations.
In addition to the impact on the organisation as a whole, this quest for a permanent balance focused the organisation on its internal facet, abandoning its external work and political presence. "There have been other mistakes. The Brussels federation and the Communist Youth tried even more to inflect the party's positions towards more distance regarding socialist countries and towards revitalising the party's political line. But they obtained only minor concessions.

Don't Give Up the Heaven
Quite logically, in the same period, there was a persistent gap between innovative resolutions on international issues and a practice that remained very tradi- Following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the Belgian Communists became more cautious. The CPB did not officially react until 7 January 1980, more than ten days after the troops had invaded. It is necessary to read the entire communiqué to arrive at reprobation, wrapped in attacks against the United The Political Bureau therefore disapproved of them" 10 .
The notion of the "two sides" also gave rise to some internal discussions, but the Communist Party's condemnation was unambiguous. Through these examples and despite the present nuances, the Communist Party's attitude had always been to condemn repression in the East. Nevertheless, "regrets", "disapprovals" or "condemnations" do not, in most cases, go beyond the framework of a specif- "These countries formed a counterweight to imperialism. And we hoped they could still reform themselves, sufficiently and in good time (…). But we were doing diplomacy. We didn't say, ""You're a bunch of imposters, we're breaking up with you"". The state of paralysis but, above all, of decomposition in which the Communist Party already found itself in the mid-1980s largely accounted for the weakness, if not even the absence of reaction of the Belgian party to the Glasnost and Perestroika earthquakes. Mihail Gorbachev's accession to the presidency of the USSR little changed the course of events for the Communist Party in Belgium. There was clear support for the new Secretary General and for the "justified" criticism of past mistakes. Yet Soviet foreign policy was so reversed that even the analyses of parties "critical" of Brezhnev's policy sounded timid, if not complacent, in retrospect, with regard to the new CPSU's positions. Paradoxically, the main changes were once again driven from... Moscow... The PCB-KPB management systematically welcomed the new Soviet initiatives and took them on board... But paradoxically, an extremely classic rhetoric redeployed itself by Open Journal of Political Science extrapolating differently from the past. "However, even if this has not always been true (we underline), is it not obvious that today, thanks to a new dynamic approach to problems, the USSR's external policy and the non-aligned countries'action very often converged in a fruitful sense for peace and for cooperation between peoples", stated for example the president of the party at the beginning of 1987 (Van Geyt, 1987: p. 34).
In the fatal year for the communist world, 1989, the main feature that characterized the communist party in the face of events was ... silence. The party continued to function "normally". This silence can be captured in several ways. First, the party had become a shadow of what it used to be. Moreover, the surprise was so great that it left the vast majority of Communists speechless. For some, it was not only a world collapsing but a life. Finally, the intellectuals who were part-members, often at the forefront of the "reformists", had deserted him; at the time when the communist system was collapsing, when a number of communist directions were handing over, there was no one in the party to embody a new line, a new credible leadership. The Communist Party continued its life in a routine, indifferent manner and in November 1989 sent an observer to the fourteenth Congress of Romanian Communists. His report was clearly without concessions 11 . But did it really take a delegate to the PCR congress to make such a diagnosis, and even when Louis Van Geyt refused to answer several invitations from Nicolae Ceaucescu? Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Communist Party held a Conference in March 1990, a Congress in November 1990 and a Congress in St Vaast in March 1995. In these circumstances, the Communist Party did not address head-on the developments in the Soviet Union and the disappearance of People's Democracies. At the convention, the resolution on this collapse was soothing: "The critical and collective analysis of the history of real socialism and of our positions in relation to it must continue in party organizations 12 ".
However, these meetings were not without impact. In March, two resolution texts were submitted to the delegates. But, as it should have been, after two days of extremely hard work and discussions, only one document was put to the vote. The Communist Party recognized that "the CPs, in their traditional forms, (had) lived, and (that) the classically defined functioning inspired by "democratic centralism", today had to redefine itself from a more open scheme of "self-managing pluralism", but no concrete implication of purpose and analysis was advanced. It was no different, besides, regarding electoral turn-out 13 .
The conference admitted the right of some federations to continue their original experience of red/green Forum. This process was born from the will of the 11 Hubert Cambier, "Souveraine ... la Roumanie choisit l'isolement", Le Drapeau rouge, 28 November 1989. 12 "4 e congrès du parti communiste, Montignies-sur-Sambre, 3/4 November 1990», Faits et arguments, December 1990 Open Journal of Political Science Brussels activists, still members of the PCB-KPB, to initiate a dialogue and, eventually, an electoral alliance with the environmental movement. Faithful to what then was its logic "neither to the left nor to the right", Ecolo-the French speaking Green Party-refused any collaboration with an outdated party. The red/green Forum initiative aborted after a few months.
Another original attempt was the transformation of the communist daily newspaper Le Drapeau rouge-the Red Flag. On 1 January 1991, the Communist paper changed its militant name to a less marked one, Freedoms-Libertés. The new project was intended to be a pluralistic expression of the left. However, the editorial team remained unchanged and funding was almost exclusively provided by the Communist Party. The experiment failed within months of its launch. In view of the developments in the Netherlands, Italy and the United Kingdom, the party had a brief debate on the name of the party. Logically enough, given the absence of debate on the substance, the communist label was maintained.
In a way, the PCB-KPB's relationship with the USSR ended with the attempted coup in August 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet system. The Communist Party reacted twice to the events of 19 August 1991 in Moscow. The first occurred before the outcome. On 20 August, the Bureau of the now Union of Belgian Communists mentions its anxiety and implicitly condemned, but not explicitly, the coup, which would lead to a deadlock 14 .
Two elements must be pointed out. The first one is the lack of any explicit condemnation of the coup attempt, which is not described in such terms. Probably more strikingly is the fact there is no support for the restoration of Gorbachev in power.
On 2 September, the Belgian Communists delivered another communiqué and, this time, explicitly mentioned the coup. The communiqué came in the form of a Farewell to the CPSU and to the homeland of socialism: "Through the implication of essential sectors of its apparatus in the failed coup, the CPSU has ultimately demonstrated its inability to participate in the profound democratic changes which are desired by the Soviet's Union people" 15 .
It took the disappearance of the USSR, the collapse of the CPSU for, internally, a last step pinpointed the implications and consequences of a dynamic at work for a long time 16 . The PCB-KPB first changed its organization and functioning at a special congress in December 1982. The approach was not implemented with a cheerful heart. Forced and bitter, the Party President conceded in June of this year some necessity to move forward 18 .

The Evolution of the PCB-KPB's Internal Structure
Power which had formally been attributed to national organs-the Party Congress, Central Committee and Political Bureau-were from this point onwards divided between the national level and the regional or community level, in accordance with Article 15 of the New Statutes: "The federal organs of the CPB are competent in all matters in regional and community interest so far as their elaboration and execution are concerned. National organs of the CPB are competent in regard to: 1) All problems concerning the Belgian road to socialism (...); 2) All matters which would remain of national interest in a federal State, and more particularly, international policy; 3) Any question still to evolve which by virtue of the law remains within the remit of the central government and national parliament (...); 4) Management of party finances and patrimony as well as the policy of cadres" 19 .
These transformations lead to the creation of regional/federal structures-the 17 After the first State refom, the Communist Party will clearly favour federalism in Belgium organized around three regions and two Communities: "(…) The communists are fighting for a real federalisation of the country, which implies the granting to the two Communities and to the three Regions truesresponsibilities exercised democratically on demarcated territories, with defined powers and competences". Particommuniste de Belgique, Que veulent les communistes? 30 questions pour un débat loyal, 1972, p. 23. Open Journal of Political Science

French-speaking Council and Bureau on the one hand, the Flemish Council and
Bureau on the other-in parallel with the maintenance of national structures.
These reforms, which were aimed at catching up with the party, considerably increased the party's functioning, even though it faced major challenges and was in militant decline. This very often led it to paralysis and to a situation of "permanent congress" and of "continuous meetings"; each of the bodies having to meet in turn to renew its political line and direction.
Above all, this late attempt was quickly overtaken by the country's institutional evolution and by the endless community conflicts within the Communist Party itself. In a context of existential questionings and after many discussions, the March 1989 convention assumed the de facto creation of two parties.
On the Flemish side, given its low weight in terms of numbers and electoral results, the Flemish wing of the PCB-KPB looked more like a small group than a party. The French-speaking part of the Communist Party now included two regional parties, Walloon and Brussels. Three governing bodies were set up: the French-speaking Convention, the French-speaking Council and the French-speaking Board. The federation structure was maintained, but at this time, some are much more virtual than material.

Conclusion
Since its creation, the PCB-KPB has mainly focused its action on industrial centres in the Hainaut, Liège and Brussels areas. The same was true, but in a more focused way, in the Antwerp metropolis and the industrial periphery of Ghent.
In Brussels and Wallonia, these trade union and political strongholds of the workers' movement suffered a slow decline which accelerated during the 1960s and 1970s. The Communist Party had founded its trade union, political and electoral influence in and through these sectors. Faced with this accelerated break-up, it found itself without answers, all the more so because, in the meantime, the Soviet Union was losing much of its aura and attractiveness. The social base that constituted and participated in the influence, even in the very existence, of the Communist Party was pulled out from under its feet.
The party's inability to reach and attract a number of segments of the growing social categories is glaringly obvious except, very partially, in Brussels. These external factors largely explain the blurring of the Belgian Communist Party from the Belgian political and social landscape in the 1980s.
Nevertheless, they do not by themselves account for the communist collapse in Belgium. The practice of a permanent balancing act in domestic and international politics, the refusal to make intelligible political choices outside the organization, all focused its attention on the practice of domestic and international diplomacy, which was unattractive and uninteresting to the outside world.
The PCB-KPB was sitting on the fence between a more working-class and pro-Soviet branch, and a more intellectual and Eurocommunist current. At a time when it was hardly more than the shadow of what it used to be, the Com- It is unlikely that another practice would not have enabled it to survive as it stands, since it is true that, whatever the lines taken by the European Communist parties, all-with the specific exception of the AKEL in Cyprus (Charalambous, 2007)-have been politically and socially affected in this decade. On the other hand, it is imaginable to think that it could have had a completely different impact on the reformulation or refoundation of a pole to the left of Social Democracy, on the socio-economic field and on new themes, such as the struggle for environmental protection, in line with the establishment of Groen Links in the Netherlands (Voerman, 2010;Voerman & Lucardie, 2016), the People's Socialist Party in Denmark, the Left Socialist Party in Norway or the Left Party in Sweden (Christensen, 1996;Olsen, 2010), or even the Red-Green List in Denmark.
Hypothetically, this might have enabled it to keep on playing a leading role in the social, political and intellectual debate to the left of the Belgian political spectrum (Gotovitch, 2008: p. 32).