He joined the
French Communist Party in 1947. In 1956, he was appointed a member of the extended
Central Committee and led the South-
Seine PCF local federation, in the bastion of
Maurice Thorez, the historical leader of the Party. Three years later, he became a full member of the Central Committee and of the
Politburo. He accused some students of being "false revolutionaries" coming from the bourgeoisie. From then on, he was one of the personalities intervening in the media in the name of the PCF. When Rochet fell ill, in 1970, he was promoted junior
General Secretary. In fact, he was at this moment the real leader of the PCF. In this, he co-signed the
Common Programme with the
Socialist Party (PS) and the
Movement of Left Radicals (MRG) in June 1972. From 1973 to 1997, he was deputy of
Val de Marne département, a southern Paris suburb. In December 1972, he became officially General Secretary, following
Waldeck Rochet's retirement. At first, he pursued the policy of his predecessor in favour of the "Union of the Left". In this, the PCF sided with
François Mitterrand's (PS) candidacy in the
1974 presidential election. At the beginning of his mandate of General Secretary, the PCF scored around 20% in the elections. But in mid-1970s, it lost its place of "first left-wing party" to
François Mitterrand's Socialist Party. At the beginning, he supported reforms in the party, which participated to
Eurocommunism with the
Italian Communist Party of
Enrico Berlinguer and the
Spanish Communist Party of
Santiago Carrillo and renounced the notion of a
dictatorship of the proletariat (22nd congress, 1976). At first, he faced with the reproaches of Soviet leaders. Then, faced with electoral growing of the PS at the expense of his party, he imposed a re-alignment on the
Soviet Union at the end of the 1970s. The left-wing parties failed to update their
Common Programme and lost the
1978 legislative election, even though they were leading in the polls. Outside and inside the party, he was accused of being responsible for this defeat. One year later, he supported the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan (1979), judged the Communist governments "fairly positive", and criticized the "right-wing drift" of the Socialist Party. In the
1981 presidential election, he came fourth in the first round, with 15% of votes, thereafter endorsing Mitterrand, who won the second round. He negotiated the entry of four PCF politicians in the cabinet of Prime Minister
Pierre Mauroy. In 1984, after President Mitterrand renounced the left's
Common Programme and the electoral sanction in the
European Parliament election (only 11% of votes) the PCF's ministers resigned from the cabinet. An electoral decline ensued and Marchais faced internal dissent from figures such as
Pierre Juquin,
Claude Poperen and former ministers as
Charles Fiterman. Indeed, some party members, notably among the locally elected, accused him of leading a suicidal strategy. He accused them of plotting with Mitterrand in order to dissolve the PCF in Social Democracy. He let
André Lajoinie, leader of the Communist group in the
French National Assembly, represent the party in the
1988 presidential election. He was reserved about
perestroika. Unlike the
Italian Communists, he refused to change the name of the French party after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. In 1994, at the 28th Congress of the PCF, he ceded his place as General Secretary to
Robert Hue, although he maintained his titular role as a member of the Politburo, which was now significantly renamed the National Office. The same year, he became President of the PCF ''Comité pour la défense des libertés et droits de l'homme en France et dans le monde'' ("Committee for the defense of human liberties and rights in France and throughout the world"). He criticized the renovation of the party under his successor. He died in 1997. ==Attitudes==