Communists
The first communist party in Belgium was founded by the more radical elements of the Belgian Labour Party in 1921 and was named the Communist Party of Belgium (KPB-PCB). The party was a member of the Comintern and entered parliament in 1925. It received its highest score in the post-war elections of 1946, when it won 12,7% of the popular vote and took part in the next coalition government. With the start of the Cold War the party started its decline and after the elections of 1985 it was no longer represented in the Belgian Parliament. The party eventually disbanded itself in 1989, but two minor parties, the Kommunistische Partij (KP) in Flanders and the Parti Communiste (PC) in Wallonia, see themselves as the successors.
The most successful Maoist movement to emerge in Belgium was All Power To The Workers (AMADA-TPO) at the end of the 1960s during a time of students protests at the University of Leuven. In 1979 this movement evolved into the Workers' Party of Belgium (PVDA-PTB), which is at the moment the biggest communist party in Belgium and is represented in various municipal councils, but not in any of the parliaments in Belgium.
Other minor communist or radical left parties are the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League (LCR-SAP) and the Left Socialist Party (LSP-PSL).
Read more about this topic: Political Parties In Belgium
Famous quotes containing the word communists:
“Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death
Making death their ideal basis for different ideals.
The Communists however disapprove of death
Except when practical.”
—William Empson (1906–1984)
“...I believed passionately that Communists were a race of horned men who divided their time equally between the burning of Nancy Drew books and the devising of a plan of nuclear attack that would land the largest and most lethal bomb squarely upon the third-grade class of Thomas Jefferson School in Morristown, New Jersey.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
“The believing mind reaches its perihelion in the so-called Liberals. They believe in each and every quack who sets up his booth in the fairgrounds, including the Communists. The Communists have some talents too, but they always fall short of believing in the Liberals.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)