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LONDON — The Communist Party of France has sparked a revolution among the comrades by removing the hammer and sickle from their membership cards.

The iconic symbol of the international proletariat has been replaced with the star of the multi-party European Left alliance, much to the horror of traditionalists at the party’s 36th congress that opened near Paris on Thursday.

What was billed by the party leadership as a forward-looking move was denounced by others as revisionist backsliding and part of a conspiracy to abandon the movement to the embrace of social democracy.

Emmanuel Dang Tran, secretary of the party’s Paris section, told France Info radio that members were shocked at the abandoning of “what represents, for the working class of this country, a historic element in resistance against the politics of capitalism.”

An anonymous commenter on the radio’s website suggested wryly: “It’s natural that they’ve abandoned their tools. There’s no work anymore!”

Mr. Tran was among those who believed the symbol change amounted to the party paying allegiance to the European Left, a coalition of left-wing movements formed in 1999 to cooperate within the European Parliament.

He said the leadership was trying to create a social democracy mark-2 alongside “Greens, socialists, Trotskyists and I don’t know who else.”

Pierre Laurent, the party’s national secretary, defended the decision to dump the hammer and sickle, saying it no longer represented present-day realities. “We want to turn towards the future,” he said on Friday.

The internal spat was the latest upset for a communist party that was once powerful on the left in France, with ministers serving in a number of Socialist-led administrations.

It remains the country’s largest left-wing party in terms of membership. But its standing has declined rapidly since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

For the first time last year, it failed to put up its own candidate at a presidential election and opted instead to support Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the Left Front.

Although the Communist Party is the largest grouping in the Left Front, hardliners complain it risks playing second fiddle to other movements in the alliance despite being its “sole historically revolutionary component.”

The 20Minutes news Website asked whether the loss of the hammer and sickle meant the party was becoming a “Communist Party light” and noted that this week’s congress had also adopted Mr. Mélenchon’s “people first” slogan.

“That is something to chew on for the many who fear the party will be dissolved into a Left Front led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon,” it wrote.

L’Humanité, the former official Communist newspaper that retains close links with the party, managed to remain upbeat as the congress opened. It ran a poll that indicated the party’s public image had improved since the creation of the Left Front.

It also interviewed the rank and file at the party congress who said that, among other things, they saw the gathering as an occasion for communists to go on the offensive, continue a citizens’ revolution, or simply spend a “fraternal moment with all the comrades.”