The PCF was founded in 1920 by Marxist–Leninist members of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) who supported the Bolsheviks in the 1917 Russian Revolution.

In response to the threat of fascism, the PCF joined the socialist Popular Front which won the 1936 election, but it did not participate in government.

It fell behind the Socialist Party in the 1970s, though entered government early in François Mitterrand's presidency (1981–1984) and participated in the Plural Left cabinet led by Lionel Jospin (1997–2002).

[11] Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a strong influence in French politics, especially at the local level.

The communists thus called for fraternization with the Moroccan insurgents during the Rif War (1925–1926) and to the evacuation of Morocco by the French army, they called for an end to the fighting and the independence of French Syria during the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925–1927, and denounced the festivities of the centenary of the colonization of Algeria, organizing in particular a campaign to boycott the Paris Colonial Exposition (1931).

[14] The party was organized around leaders who were mostly from the working class, setting up training and promotion schemes and encouraging the presentation of working-class candidates in elections.

The Maurice Thorez, Jacques Duclos and Benoît Frachon team, who had been miners, metalworkers and pastry cooks respectively, had an exceptional longevity and led the French party for almost three decades.

[17] The party was banned in 1939 by the government of Édouard Daladier as a result of the German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact, due to its membership in the Comintern, which opposed the War (prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany).

Shortly before Germany invaded the Soviet Union the next year, the PCF formed, in May 1941, the National Front movement within the broader Resistance, together with the armed Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP) group.

At the same time the PCF began to work with de Gaulle's "Free France" government in exile, and later took part in the National Council of the Resistance (CNR).

For the rest of the Fourth Republic period the PCF, led by Thorez and Jacques Duclos, remained politically isolated, still taking a Marxist-Leninist line, though retaining substantial electoral support.

[20] Although the PCF opposed de Gaulle's formation of the Fifth Republic in 1958, the following years saw a rapprochement with other left-wing forces and an increased strength in parliament.

It provided for an increase in wages and social benefits, a reduction in working hours, a retirement age of 60 for men and 55 for women, the expansion of workers' rights and freedoms, the abolition of the death penalty and nuclear disarmament.

To maintain a presence in parliament after 2007 the party's few remaining deputies had to join others in the Democratic and Republican Left group (GDR).

Pierre Laurent was leader from 2010 to 2018, being succeeded by Fabien Roussel who stood as the party's candidate at the 2022 French presidential election.

In the 1980s, under Georges Marchais, the PCF mixed a partial acceptance of "bourgeois" democracy and individual liberties with more traditional Marxist–Leninist ideas.

During this same period the PCF was run on democratic centralist lines and structured itself as a revolutionary party in the Leninist sense and rejected criticism of the Soviet Union.

In the 1981 presidential election, Georges Marchais ran a controversial campaign on immigration which was harshly criticized by anti-racism organizations at the time.

[24]: 177  The PCF has interpreted the current course of globalization as a confirmation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's view on the future evolution of capitalism.

[24]: 178 The text adopted at the XXXVI Congress in February 2013 reiterated the party's call on the need to "overcome" capitalism, fiercely denounced by the PCF as having led to "savage competition", "the devastation of the planet" and "barbarism".

For instance in 1984, the Soviet ethnographer Solomon Bruk (who had worked under Sergey Tolstov) published a study on France and mentioned the existence of other ethnic groups in the state such as Bretons, Corsicans, Alsatians, Basques, Catalans, Flemish and others.

In response to this work, General Secretary Georges Marchais wrote a letter of protest in February 1984, complaining bitterly to the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Since the PCF's decline began in the 1970s, however, it has seen its membership base slowly dry up and its allied organizations disappear or distance themselves from the party.

The most marked change was a major decline in the share of manual workers (ouvriers) in the party's membership, with a larger number of employees and middle-classes, especially those who work in the public sector.

[40] Nevertheless, certain factions and groups are easily identifiable within the PCF and they are de facto expressed officially by different orientation texts or lists for leadership elections at party congresses.

[43] Currently, the PCF retains some strength in suburban Paris, in the Nord section of the old coal mining area in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the industrial harbours of Le Havre and Dieppe, in some departments of central France, such as Allier and Cher (where a form of sharecropping existed, in addition to mining and small industrial-mining centres such as Commentry and Montceau-les-Mines), the industrial mining region of northern Meurthe-et-Moselle (Longwy) and in some cities of the south, such as the industrial areas of Marseille and nearby towns, as well as the working-class suburbs surrounding Paris (the ceinture rouge), Lyon, Saint-Étienne, Alès and Grenoble.

There exist isolated Communist bases in the rural anti-clerical areas of southwestern Côtes-d'Armor and northwestern Morbihan; in the industrial areas of Le Mans; in the shipbuilding cities of Saint-Nazaire, La Seyne-sur-Mer (there are no more ships built in La Seyne); and in isolated industrial centres built along the old Paris-Lyon railway (the urban core of Romilly-sur-Seine, Aube has elected a Communist general councillor since 1958).

[48] In 1976, for instance, the communist mayor of Sarcelles, Henry Canacos, was named "best mayor in the Paris region" by Vie Publique (a trade periodical for urban planners and administrators) for enriching Sarcelles' public spaces with new restaurants, movie theatres, cafes, more parks, a large shopping mall, and better transportation.

The paper is sustained by the annual Fête de L'Humanité festival, held in La Courneuve, a working class suburb of Paris.