Berkley Center

Any historically minded visitor to Paris is likely to remark on the city’s street names, replete with references to politicians, writers, artists, generals, and decisive military battles. These names are hard to miss; a traveler just off the plane is likely to notice this in a stroll through the city’s most touristy areas.

Just off the Champs-Elysées, for instance, there’s Avenue George V, named after the king of Britain during World War I. Keep walking toward Place de la Concorde and one soon hits Avenue Franklin Roosevelt. And yet for every Rue Guillaume Apollinaire or Rue Charles Swann that I’m delighted to come across, there always seem to be a handful of streets that owe their names to obscure military generals, some of whom have probably earned these tributes—like, say, the men and women who fought in the resistance against the Nazi occupation—but others in homage to those who pursued sufficiently less noble ends, like the “defense” of French Indochina or Algeria.

This clustered grid of historical references isn’t limited to the tight boundaries of Paris proper. The streets and squares of Paris’ suburbs, known as the banlieue, are full of them too. These small tributes tell stories not only of their subjects, but also of who chose the names in the first place. In short, these stories are inextricably tied to the French Communist Party (Parti Communiste Français, PCF) and its longtime hold on local governments in the suburbs surrounding Paris, once known as the ceinture rouge, or the "red belt."

In the northeastern suburb of Aubervilliers, where I’ve been living this fall, the legacy of the PCF is unavoidable. Just a few blocks from where I live, there’s Avenue Jean Jaurès, named after the father of French socialism and founder of the still widely read newspaper L’Humanité. This street forms an intersection with Avenue Danielle Casanova, named after the French Communist resistant.

Further east toward the border with Pantin, there’s Avenue Lénine. City hall, controlled by the PCF from 1944 to 2008, is located just off Paris Commune Street. Then there are my two favorites: Rosa Luxembourg Middle School and Angela Davis kindergarten. Seeing mothers arrive hand-in-hand with their small children under a bright red portrait of the American radical, with her proud Afro in all of its revolutionary glory, is a sight I will sorely miss when I return home in December.

France is rather unique in this respect; with the exception of Italy, it’s the only Western European country to have had a powerful Communist Party, and not without reason. The PCF emerged after World War II as an enormously potent political force, earning respect and support as the “party of the 75,000 executed” for its leading (but surely exaggerated) role in the resistance.

The party’s base of support was centered around industrial areas, like the region of Auvergne in the center of the country, some northern mining towns, and of course, the Parisian suburbs, which were largely inhabited by immigrant workers. Having long-abandoned the cause of revolution, the PCF essentially became a social-democratic party in the second half of the twentieth century, committed to protecting workers and creating a large welfare state.

Today, however, the PCF’s power is much more limited. The old “red belt” has more than a few holes in it, and the center-left Socialist Party has taken advantage of the Communists’ long and slow dip in popularity. While it still has a few seats in the National Assembly, the Communist Party is mostly a relic of another era, as street names and statues of former party leaders that are scattered across the suburbs serve as a testament to its former strength.

If there’s one event that illustrates the transition from a feared political force to a harmless cultural relic, it’s the annual Humanité Festival, named after the left-wing newspaper and organized by activists affiliated with PCF’s current electoral alliance. The festival, launched in the 1930s, now takes place in the Paris suburb of La Courneuve and managed to attract over 500,000 people in three days this past September. While the event was at one point a serious political meeting, it has evolved into an immensely popular three-day festival of drinking, eating, and music, coupled with a book fair and some debates. In fact, three of the four leading Socialist Party primary contenders made well-publicized appearances, and this year’s festival marked the launch of the presidential and legislative campaigns of PCF’s electoral alliance.

Still, it’s the only place (to the best of my knowledge) where one can flip through a copy of State and Revolution, eat churros, and listen to Avril Lavigne all at the same time. It should be said that I remain slightly embarrassed by the latter.

As I wandered along with a friend, I found myself wondering what the festival was like back in the 1930s, when the possibility of revolution was openly discussed and when the PCF used to actually represent the majority of French workers. Although the party is a mere shadow of what it used to be, the festival still manages to display its geographical diversity and impressive organization: different party federations from across France set up stands in which they serve their local food and drink.

You can eat ratatouille and pastis from the Marseille tent, seafood from those of Normandy and Brittany, and wine from all of them. One also senses that the majority of volunteers are seasoned party veterans who have been coming to the festival for years. One wonders what they must think of it now? Then again, with all the fun everyone seems to be having, that question isn't really on the agenda.

Nevertheless, the vendors were delighted to speak with young and politically engaged foreigners. I chatted up an old pied-noir volunteer at a tent run by a party branch from a rural area in the southwest of France. He asked about the United States, then we talked about the debt crisis in Europe, the French elections, and finally, of course, what the future would bring. What does it take for positive change to happen? Was he optimistic?

"Well, things are simple," he said, "but people are complicated."

Agreed.