Martin Suchanek
The European and French bourgeoisie can breathe a sigh of relief, at least for the time being. Although Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN = National Rally) gained more votes than any other party, this did not give it more seats, let alone the majority needed to form the government.
The leaders of the Nouveau Front populaire (NFP = New Popular Front) declared themselves winners on the evening of the election and claimed the right to form a government for themselves. Macron, whose party was able to limit its losses, also presented himself as the quasi-winner of „republican unity“, which led to candidates from the NFP or Macron’s ensemble withdrawing their candidacy in around 200 constituencies in favour of the better-placed candidates from the first round of voting. As a result, both the government and its left-wing opponents now see themselves as winners or at least as having a strategy for victory.
The result
Only the NFP, an alliance of reformist and petty-bourgeois parties, PS (Socialist Party), PCF (Communist Party), La France insoumise (LFI = Unbowed France), the Greens and some smaller parties, can rightly consider itself the winner of the election. According to the Neue Züricher Zeitung (1), from which we have taken the following figures (unless otherwise stated), together with seats won in the first round, the NFP won a total of 180 seats, making it the largest parliamentary group. Compared to the last parliamentary elections, this represents a gain of 49 MPs in total for the four parties.
While the NFP’s first place was something of a surprise, the alliance of the previous governing parties, Ensemble (pour la République; Together for the Republic), will enter parliament as the second strongest group with 166 MPs. Although Macron’s party alliance lost around a third of its seats (- 79!), it got off lightly in view of the disaster in the first round of voting. While Ensemble does not have a majority, even together with Les Républicains (The Republicans), a parliamentary majority cannot be formed without this group, meaning that Macron has powerful leverage in any future government formation based on the parliamentary constellation alone. Finally, the traditional party of the French bourgeoisie, Les Républicains, together with various other right-wing parties, received 65 seats – 5 more than in 2022, despite the transition of part of the party to the RN. It effectively forms a reserve for the Macron camp.
The far-right, right-wing populist Rassemblement National was only the third-strongest parliamentary group. Even though it had already become clear in the polls since the first round of voting that it could not achieve a majority of seats, many expected the RN to enter parliament as the strongest parliamentary group. It fell well short of this with 143 seats, even if it did gain 54 compared to 2022.
The right halted?
Abroad, the liberal and conservative bourgeois parties, the social democrats, the Greens and the left-wing parties are celebrating the elections in France as if they had contested them themselves. „A load has been taken off many people’s minds,“ says a delighted Kevin Kühnert, General Secretary of the SPD. Armin Laschet, former CDU party leader, even concludes: „The feeling that France is actually already on the way to the right is wrong.“ He recommends a broad German popular front to keep the AfD out of any government in the state elections in the east.
In this way, the result is glorified as a brilliant victory for democracy that would point the way to successfully stopping the shift to the right in Europe. The „republican unity“, the broad popular front from the NFP to Macron’s ensemble and the „anti-fascist wing“ of the Gaullist Les Républicains, is being touted as the new firewall against the right, known in Germany as the „unity of democrats“.
In reality, this „unity“ of opposing class forces will not prove to be an obstacle, but a precursor of the right. Even the election results in France show this as soon as we look not only at the distribution of seats in parliament, but also at the number of votes. The fact that Le Pen did not enter the Chamber of Deputies as the leader of the strongest party is not only due to agreements before the second round of voting, but also to an undemocratic majority voting system. RN received 8.7 million votes in the second round (2), which corresponds to 32%. Together with their allies, who are part of the new parliamentary group, the percentage is as high as 36.18%! The NFP follows with 7 million (25.68%) and Ensemble with 6.3 million (37.1%). Les Républicains received only 1.47 million votes (5.41%).
In the European elections and in the first and second rounds of voting, a third of voters voted for RN, with the party significantly stronger in the more rural and small-town regions than in many metropolitan centres such as Paris. In the second round of voting, the RN and its allies achieved 37.1% – double their share of the vote compared to 2022! Talking about stopping the RN and the shift to the right is not just silly, it’s dangerous. Rather, the parliamentary results distort their consolidation and the real shift to the right that France has undergone in recent years.
Secondly, the unity of the „republican camp“, i.e. the withdrawal of the lower-placed candidates in favour of those with the most votes in the first round, strengthened the central parties of French capital, Ensemble, but also Les Républicains. Two thirds of the withdrawn candidates came from the ranks of the NFP. While their parties withdrew their representatives in favour of Ensemble, i.e. the government camp, the latter refused in a number of cases to do the same in favour of LFI. Instead, they continue to demonise Mélenchon as just as dangerous as the right.
Ensemble’s surprisingly good performance in the second election campaign is therefore primarily due to the NFP’s policies. This is also reflected in the percentage increase of the governing party in the second round compared to the first (by 3.1% from 20.04% to 23.14%), which corresponds to a simultaneous loss of the NFP (by 2.38% from 28.06% to 25.68%).
A comparison of the share of votes in the elections with the share of seats in the National Assembly makes it clear that Ensemble and Les Républicains are extremely overrepresented. Together, they hold 229 seats and 39.7% of all MPs, although they only received 28.55% of the vote in the second round.
This strengthening of the openly bourgeois parties vis-à-vis the reformist and petty-bourgeois left reveals the political essence of a popular front, i.e. a cross-class alliance between parties based on antagonistic classes, even at the level of electoral arithmetic. It necessarily leads to subordination to the ruling class and its parties – all the more so as ultimately the core of the alliance will most likely be the formation of a coalition government of some kind between the NFP and Macron.
The question of government, Macron and the NFP
As the election winners, the leaders of the NFP, Mélenchon of the LFI and Glucksmann of the PS, have laid claim to forming the next government. So much for their – provisional – unity. As the largest parties in the NFP, both are claiming the post of prime minister for themselves or their party. Both point out that they pulled the chestnuts out of the fire for Macron and the bourgeoisie in the elections and derive a moral right to form a government from this. But the ruling class knows neither selflessness nor gratitude towards its reformist and populist saviours.
Macron has no intention of recognising the victory of their alliance and clearing the way for the formation of a government. He prefers to wait and see, while leaving the current head of government Attal in office, ostensibly to maintain „stability“ for the coming months and, should there be no new government, which is entirely possible, to appoint an „expert government“ for a „transition“ of an unspecified duration. In other words, after the election, in which Macron made a serious miscalculation but got off lightly thanks to the support of the Popular Front, he can play for time. He can dictate the conditions for a „republican government“, i.e. a coalition, to the NFP as a whole or to individual parties.
And this game may well work. Firstly, Macron has a parliamentary centre (ensemble plus the Gaullists in an emergency), on whose votes the NFP is dependent at parliamentary level. Finally, Macron is president, and will continue to govern even without a new government. If he is unable to make the NFP compliant through parliamentary channels, he can use his extensive powers. The Bonapartist and authoritarian nature of the office will therefore become more apparent if no new government can be formed for months or even more than a year.
Political instability
However, such a regime would not be one of strength, but rather one of institutionalised instability. Even if Macron will increasingly resort to Bonapartist and authoritarian instruments of rule, his regime is clearly different from classical Bonapartism. Louis Bonaparte (and other „classical“ Bonapartist regimes) came to power at the end of a period of class struggle, when the main classes of society had exhausted themselves in battle. On this basis, Napoleon III, for example, was able to re-stabilise bourgeois rule as an alliance of the financial oligarchy, the state bureaucracy and the peasant petty bourgeoisie.
Macron’s social base, however, is running away in the direction of the RN and NFP. The French petty bourgeoisie, the middle classes and the working class are hostile to him. This applies not only to the supporters of the RN, but also to those of the reformist and left-wing populist parties.
In addition, France’s economy is stagnating. France’s current Finance and Economy Minister, Bruno Le Maire, is warning of „economic decline“ and a financial crisis in light of the left’s demands for redistribution. The EU is planning a deficit procedure due to excessive debt. The European Commission and rating agencies are calling for government spending to be cut by 20 to 30 billion euros per year and are also warning of the costs of the NFP programmes, which they estimate at 120 billion. „France is facing years of stagnation“, summarises the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Neither the French nor the European bourgeoisie trust Macron to solve these problems. Basically, they will be happy if he prevents „worse“ and does not make any overly expensive social concessions to the NFP.
Logic of the popular front
Macron’s problem is that he can ultimately only shore up his regime socially through a pact with the NFP or parts of it. Among the leaders of the left, there are undoubtedly many – above all Glucksmann and the PS – who would be only too happy to form a „republican government“ with Macron, especially if the PS were given the post of prime minister. Mélenchon could also be trusted with such a manoeuvre, even if he is vehemently opposed to it at the moment and is calling on Macron to voluntarily pave the way for an NFP government. In reality, of course, everyone knows that the president will certainly not do this and that the Popular Front can only be deployed with his consent as long as it remains within the framework of parliamentarism.
Basically, it is in the logic of the Popular Front and the strategy of its leaders to seek a „republican alliance“ for the defence of democracy and the „pacification“ of France through social reforms. Such an alliance seems to them to be in the common interest of all classes, of the entire nation, of capital, labour and the petty bourgeoisie.
This is due to the fact that they themselves do not understand the causes of the economic and social crisis processes in France. They see them as a crisis of distribution, as a lack of demand caused by insufficient wages, income and government spending. They are therefore relying on a comparatively ambitious Keynesian programme to boost purchasing power and the economy, which is to be financed primarily through government debt and, in part, by taxing the rich. Such a programme, the Popular Front continues to argue, would not only benefit the masses and the environment, but also businesses, which would be able to sell more goods and services and thus make more profits.
In other words, the reformist, populist and petty-bourgeois politicians of the Popular Front view capitalism only from the side of circulation. If supply and demand could be brought into balance by means of state intervention, if every commodity could find buyers at „fair prices“, all classes would be served.
This petty-bourgeois idea of being able to regulate capitalism in the interests of all misjudges its essence as well as that of the bourgeois state. For capital, the sale of goods is only one means, albeit an unavoidable one, of appropriating surplus value and turning it into profit. Profit, and not simply the mass, but the rate of profit, the ratio of capital invested to capital realised, is what counts. Even if Mélenchon and Glucksmann think that French capital is rich enough, what counts for it in the competition is not the moral judgement of the leaders of the Popular Front, but its profitability in comparison to German, US, British or Chinese capital.
However, the utopian, petty-bourgeois idea of capitalism explains why the leaders of the Popular Front cannot recognise any contradiction or impossibility in a cross-class alliance with Macron, in a „sensible“ economic policy that is apparently above the classes in the interests of the „entire nation“. They are almost desperately offering themselves as doctors at the sickbed of French capitalism, indeed, they accuse the ruling class of not recognising that their Keynesian therapy would also be in their interests.
This strategy, this programme, will not save either French capitalism or the working class, but it is the means by which Macron and the French bourgeoisie can integrate at least parts of the NFP and the trade union bureaucracy, a formal or informal grand coalition in French, so to speak.
Should this be based on Ensemble and the entire Popular Front and thus indirectly on the trade union bureaucracy, La France insoumise and the PCF would also have to be integrated into this government, as LFI alone has 71 seats (3) and the PCF has 9. Without these votes, there would be no parliamentary majority.
However, Macron can also rely on splitting the Popular Front. It would certainly be easier to integrate the PS and the Greens than La France insoumise. But for a parliamentary majority, he would need the 61 PS MPs, 33 Greens and 168 Ensemble MPs as well as those of Les Républicains.
And the voters?
Even if the leaders of the Popular Front would not shy away from unprincipled manoeuvres and lazy compromises for the greater good of the nation – they have already made far-reaching concessions to Macron on foreign policy in their election manifesto – they do fear that they will lose their own base in such a government if they are unable to present at least a few presentable reforms.
This is precisely the problem. The NFP has not only pushed for „republican unity“ against the RN in order to keep it out of the government, it has also promised a break with Macronism. This includes the reversal of central policies of recent years, above all the pension reform, the cuts to unemployment benefits and the racist migration laws, as well as the increase in the minimum wage to 1,600 euros, the taxation of the rich and the capping of energy prices. Now, for better or worse, Macronism is to be eliminated in cooperation with Macron; squaring the circle would form the actual programme of the NFP in government.
A coalition of (parts of) the NFP and Ensemble would only be possible if the NFP renounces a large part of its election promises by watering them down beyond recognition or dragging them out in endless parliamentary commissions. But the NFP’s voters – millions of wage earners, young people, the socially and racially oppressed – were reluctant to take the path of „republican unity“ even in the elections. They voted for the NFP not only to block the RN, not just for an abstract democracy above the classes, but also because they want a real break with Macronism.
The leaders of the Popular Front fear this internal contradiction between the reformist and petty-bourgeois leaderships of the NFP and their base, which also runs through the trade unions and social movements. In this respect, it may not be inconvenient for them that the summer holidays and the Olympic Games are now approaching – time to conduct secret negotiations behind the backs of their own base, to sound out the situation with Macron and his followers.
Inner Contradiction
The internal contradiction of the NFP must be taken up by all class-struggle forces and, above all, by all organisations such as the NPA-R, LO and PR, which have correctly rejected participation in the NFP. A clear demand must be made of the leaders of the Popular Front: no coalition, no secret talks with Macron or Ensemble!
To this end, the key progressive, central promises of the NFP, such as the reversal of the pension reform, must be taken up and the PS, LFI, PCF and trade unions must demand a mass mobilisation for them. Assemblies should be organised in workplaces, trade unions and neighbourhoods to discuss and decide how these demands can now be implemented, and to form action committees and a national coordinating body for this purpose.
The aim of the working class must be to prepare an offensive of the labour movement against any government that is formed.
All this will intensify the class struggle. At the same time, it will make it more difficult for the RN to present itself in a social-demagogic and racist way as the only opposition force. On the other hand, the internal contradictions in the popular front can also be sharpened in this way.
The way forward must be marked out by a programme of action that links these struggles with the struggle for power, for a workers‘ government. This programme must form the strategy of a revolutionary party that must struggle for leadership among the most militant sections of the workers and youth. We therefore appeal to these elements to join the NPA-R and work to give it such a programme in the course of the coming struggles.
Endnotes
(1) https://www.nzz.ch/international/wahlen-in-frankreich-alle-ergebnisse-in-der-uebersicht-ld.1838535
Unless otherwise stated, the following figures are taken from this source. The factional strengths of the various parties differ in different newspapers, which is also related to the fact that some „independent“ candidates are still deciding who to join until the formal formation of the faction.
(2) See for the absolute figures: https://www.resultats-elections.interieur.gouv.fr/legislatives2024/ensemble_geographique/index.html
(3) Figures according to NZZ, Le Figaro speaks of a total of 184 deputies from the NPF and 79 from La France insoumise.