Marc Lasalle \u2013 a member of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) and supporter of the League for the Fifth International<\/i><\/p>\n
During the downfall of the USSR and the \u201cactually existing socialism\u201d of eastern European states, the Parti communiste fran\u00e7ais (PCF) underwent a major rethink of its old pro-Moscow Stalinism, what it called mutation. It explicitly dropped \u201cdemocratic centralism\u201d (in reality bureaucratic centralism), allowing inner party tendencies, alternative lists for central committee elections, etc.<\/p>\n
This was all hailed as a renaissance of the party. And indeed it rapidly seemed to bear fruit. The party\u2019s secretary Robert Hue won 8.8 per cent of the vote in the first round of the 1995 presidential election and in the 1997 parliamentary elections the PCF won 9.9 per cent and 35 seats.<\/p>\n
But it won these advances on the basis of an alliance with the Parti socialiste (PS) under Lionel Jospin \u2013 the Gauche plurielle\/Plural Left. Indeed the PCF got ministerial posts in the government. But short-term gain led to long-term pain. Implication in Jospin\u2019s turn to neoliberal policies of privatisation and cuts dictated by the Maastricht process of European integration led to the discredit of the PCF amongst its working class electorate.<\/p>\n
In 2002 Jospin suffered a catastrophe in the presidential elections, being knocked out in the first round. At the same time the PCF saw its candidate Robert Hue get an all-time low of 3.37 per cent, or just 967,000 votes. The beneficiaries of this debacle for reformism were the far left groups. In 2002 Trotskyist candidates together got over 10 per cent or nearly 3 million votes, humbling the once mighty PCF.<\/p>\n
The SP and the PCF proved unable to recover by the next presidential elections in 2007, which saw the right under Nicolas Sarkozy hold onto power. And once again the far left in the person of the young postal worker Olivier Besancenot, candidate of the Ligue communiste revolutionnaire (LCR), got nearly 1.5 million votes. The PCF\u2019s Marie-Georges Buffet did even worse than Hue and scored 707,000, or just under 2 per cent.<\/p>\n
It appeared to both the reformist left and the far left itself that a major displacement was underway in terms of who would lead the militant vanguard of the French working class. The LCR in 2008-09 launched the campaign for a New Anticapitalist Party (Nouveau parti anticapitaliste, NPA), which rapidly attracted around 9,000 members. But the near-death experience for the PCF (and to some extent the SP) convinced a section of their leaderships of the need to create something new and more attractive to militant workers and anticapitalist youth, who might otherwise consolidate around the NPA.<\/p>\n
Since then, getting this \u201cdouble digit\u201d result has obsessed the leaders of both the radical reformist and the far left. Connected with this is the project of uniting all the parties to the left of the SP. While many activists were strongly in favour of a unity candidate for the presidential elections in 2007, these discussions foundered because the PCF undemocratically tried to fix the selection process so that its own lacklustre leader, Marie-Georges Buffet, would win. In some sense, the foundation of the Parti de gauche (PG) and the NPA were differing answers given to the opportunities posed by this political conjuncture.<\/p>\n
Within the PS faced with leaders like Jospin, S\u00e9gol\u00e8ne Royal and Fran\u00e7ois Hollande, all unwilling to oppose the neoliberal \u201creforms\u201d being pressed for by the EU, Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon decided to split with the party and build a left reformist alternative. Before 2008 he was a relatively minor figure on the left wing of the party. A junior minister under Jospin, he did not distinguish himself by expressing any radical opinions, though, like Jospin, his early political education was in the Trotskyist group of Pierre Lambert.<\/p>\n
M\u00e9lenchon decided that to make any headway he would have to borrow as much of the rhetorical radicalism and even revolutionary slogans as he safely could from the NPA without breaking from reformism and a strictly electoral strategy. At the same time, he was realistic enough to know that to make headway at the ballot box he needed the aid of bureaucratic apparatus of the PCF in local and national government and the support of the Conf\u00e9d\u00e9ration g\u00e9n\u00e9rale du travail (CGT) union federation, still dominated by the PCF.<\/p>\n
Immediately after the announcement of the formation of the PG in November 2008, M\u00e9lenchon and the PCF declared that they were forming an alliance for the European elections. It was to be called the \u201cLeft Front for another Europe, democratic and social, against the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and the other European treaties\u201d (FG).<\/p>\n
They clarified that the front was open to all the parties who had engaged in the victorious campaign against the European Constitutional Treaty in 2005. In the following months, the PG launched a unity offensive aimed at the NPA, calling it to join this front and writing an open letter to its members.<\/p>\n
This manoeuvre revealed the aim of both the PG and FG: to form an electoral bloc able to attract votes from both the far left and from disillusioned SP-ers. Their target was the substantial number who had voted for Arlette Laguiller of Lutte ouvriere (LO) and Besancenot of the LCR. This move proved a remarkable success, thanks purely to the deep divisions within the NPA, inherited from its founder the LCR, but also to the fact that LO, which had refused to participate in forming the NPA, retained its self-isolating passive propaganda existence.<\/p>\n
The destructive factional struggle which broke out in the NPA when it turned down the unity proposals of the FG and the subsequent growth of the latter produced a decline in the NPA\u2019s membership and a decline in its electoral fortunes as rapid as its rise \u2013 leaving the field wide open to M\u00e9lenchon and a PCF, undergoing yet another of its periodic renaissances.<\/p>\n
The peak of this success was M\u00e9lenchon\u2019s dynamic presidential campaign in 2012. In Vierzon, he declared: \u201cWe\u2019re back \u2013 the France of revolution!\u201d and \u201cIf Europe is a volcano \u2013 then France is the revolutionary crater!\u201d<\/p>\n
This barnstorming style culminated in his mass rally at the Place Bastille on 18 March, where he called for the foundation a Sixth republic and a \u201ccitizen insurrection\u201d to take back the power from the financiers and give it to the people. And once again the revolutionary rhetoric was laid on in buckets:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a revolution, there are no nice bits and nasty bits. It is a whole unto itself! Yes, there may be mistakes and failures \u2013 but oh, how marvellous, how glorious, how splendid, how extraordinary, how luminous a story for humankind!\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet when it comes to the class struggle \u2013 direct action by the youth or strikes by the workers \u2013 M\u00e9lenchon and the PG drop their revolutionary rhetoric completely. Indeed it is clear that their \u201crevolutionism\u201d is that of a petty bourgeois populist not that of the socialist working class.<\/p>\n
In fact, the PG has consistently emphasised traditional \u201cpolitical\u201d means – elections, petitions and rallies, rather than direct action and strikes. This was the case in 2008, when Sarkozy introduced a new \u201creform\u201d of the postal service. A large mobilisation by workers and users posed the problem of how to continue the struggle. M\u00e9lenchon suggested a campaign for a referendum as an alternative to any form of direct action. When in 2009 the NPA proposed a national march of unemployed, M\u00e9lenchon rejected the idea:<\/p>\n
\u201cThis worries me a little. Politics should not come up like this in the social movement giving instructions. The trade unions have raised the lid on social resignation. Our responsibility is to lift that of political resignation. The link between social movements and politics is not mechanical. We need to offer a political alternative rather than to be in a competition with the unions.\u201d<\/p>\n
These arguments are in line with the famous 1906 Charter of Amiens \u2013 adopted by the CGT \u2013 that proclaimed the unions\u2019 \u201ccomplete independence from political parties\u201d. Whilst its syndicalist authors saw this as a means to keep reformist socialism out of the revolutionary trade unions, today, this division only results in blocking mass social and union struggles from espousing and attaining political goals.<\/p>\n
It condemns the mass strike waves and social movements, which are regular occurrences in France, to either winning temporary concessions or failing completely like the great anti-pension reform struggle of 2010. Such failures for direct action occur because they cannot transform themselves into all out political strike action. This ends up reinforcing a vote for reformist parties as the only solution. Thus the defeat for the unions in 2010 opened the way for a revival of the PS.<\/p>\n
Another classic reformist element to M\u00e9lenchon and the PG\u2019s politics is nationalism. This starts with his view of Europe and his criticism of German dominance:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to strike at the heart of the problem, Europe. We need a break on three points. First, the French-German relationship, that is totally out of equilibrium and profits only German capitalism. Then the euro \u2013 we have always defended the idea that the common currency could help a progressive politics; however, today this is not anymore possible because of the obstinacy of the European leaders. Finally the Mediterranean arc \u2013 is it not the moment to understand that we have another centre of gravity different from Germany, namely the Mediterranean?\u201d<\/p>\n
Here M\u00e9lenchon clarifies his view of the role of France in the world. Europe does not work because it does not profit French capitalism sufficiently. Even his allusion to the Mediterranean suggests that the natural space for France to turn to is North Africa.<\/p>\n
Despite ambiguous statements and veiled criticisms, the reality is that PG supports French imperialism in Africa. When Sarkozy decided to intervene in Libya, the PG supported this intervention. When Hollande intervened in Mali, the FG\u2019s official spokesperson in the parliament voiced his full support for the intervention. M\u00e9lenchon himself, it is true, restricted himself to asking Hollande to reveal the real reasons for this intervention but he did not condemn it, and neither the PG nor FG organised nor joined any sort of demonstration against this intervention.<\/p>\n
More recently, when France sent troops to the Central African Republic in December 2013, Fran\u00e7ois Delapierre, national secretary of PG, expressed their position pretty bluntly:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn contrast to previous military operations, this is totally within international law because the UN Security Council has given to our country a mandate to support the African force MISCA, whose objective is to protect the civilian population and to \u2018stabilise\u2019 the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went straight on to say:<\/p>\n
\u201cEnergy production in our country depends on this resource (uranium) that is not produced in our subsoil. Central Africa has the Bakuma deposits and strategic borders with neighbours who have the precious mineral. So long as nuclear energy remains the primary source for electricity production in our country, France will control the governments which keep the keys to the African mines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Refreshingly frank imperialist reasoning but not a whiff of socialism or a revolutionary standpoint.<\/p>\n
Those who think that the distinction between reform and revolution is an \u201cold 20th Century dogma\u201d and of no use in practical politics should ponder on this: while the NPA consistently opposes French imperialist interventions in the African countries, the PG does not.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/p>\n
The PG profited from a rapid upward trajectory, developing in a year or two from a small split into a national party. Its electoral front with the PCF, the FG, has obtained non-negligible scores (around 6%) in the 2009 and 2010 European and regional elections. M\u00e9lenchon did manage to attain the yearned for double-digit score (11%) in the first round of the 2012 presidential elections. However, the reasons of these successes could be also the seeds of its next crisis.<\/p>\n
The PG is still quite small and weakly rooted when measured against the PCF. It has only around 12,000 members. Its elected representatives are few \u2013 one member of the European Parliament, 17 regional councillors, 11 general councillors, one metropolitan councillor and two Paris councillors. It heads only seven communes of more than 3,500 inhabitants and has no deputies in the lower house of parliament or the Senate. Moreover the PG could only realise what gains it has thanks to the still dense network of the PCF in French society, and especially thanks to the CGT campaigning for FG on several occasions.<\/p>\n
Compare this with the PCF. It has 138, 000 members, even though only 70,000 of these pay their subs. It has 13 MPs and 19 senators, 10 000 councillors in 800 councils, 89 mayors of towns with more than 9,000 inhabitants. Given many of these receive handsome salaries it is clear why defending these gains \u2013 most made with PS support at local level \u2013 is non-negotiable for the PCF, as is its refusal to rule out taking office again as a junior partner in a PS-led government.<\/p>\n
The PG on the other hand can only grow at the expense of the PS and by challenging it electorally wherever possible. And from its point of view the PS doesn\u2019t need deals with such an electorally negligible a force as the PG (in contrast to its need for PCF votes in the latter\u2019s old heartlands).<\/p>\n
After the election of Hollande, the PCF and PG were immediately faced with a serious political difference. The PCF, true to its traditions since the 1980s, has chosen not to oppose the government but to simply criticise it. It believes in this way it will obtain some progressive measures. In reality the PS has a grip on the PCF\u2019s financial lifeline, since only with its support does it hang on to its MPs, councillors, mayors and many other elected and salaried positions.<\/p>\n
The PCF\u2019s determination to strike electoral agreements with the PS for the March 2014 local elections, especially in Paris, led to sharp exchanges with M\u00e9lenchon and the PG. In October last year the PCF\u2019s unilateral decision to do this provoked M\u00e9lenchon into delaying an FG agreement for the European elections in May. Since the PCF\u2019s summer school, a veritable vendetta has also been going on between the PG leader and Pierre Laurent, leader of the PCF. M\u00e9lenchon was even more furious when Laurent was elected as president of the European Left Party \u2013 the bloc of parties to left of the Social Democratic and Labour parties in the European Parliament \u2013 and threatened to with draw temporarily from the organisation.<\/p>\n
In fact, in half the seats the two parties of the FG fought with different allies \u2013 the PCF with the governing SP and the PG with the Greens, also in the government.<\/p>\n
For all its denunciation of financial capitalism, the PG is not an anticapitalist party at all. For all its talk of a \u201ccitizen revolution\u201d and a Sixth Republic, it still supports the repressive machinery of the existing capitalist state. It is also a party that defends French imperialism and its control of countries of the former French Empire in Africa when the chips are down. It is the kind of a party that neither the French nor the British working class needs.<\/p>\n
The PG\u2019s squabbling with the PCF over the spoils of electoral office indicates exactly what sort of party the PG is. It is not really a \u201cnew party\u201d whose \u201cbroadness\u201d should serve as a model for Left Unity in Britain or anywhere else for that matter. It is an absolutely traditional reformist party: like those that have betrayed the working class, both in power and opposition, for the past hundred years. The task remains to rescue the NPA from its confusion and internal squabbling \u2013 and win it to a revolutionary programme and a class struggle practice.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marc Lasalle \u2013 a member of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) and supporter of the League for the Fifth International During the downfall of the USSR and the \u201cactually existing socialism\u201d of eastern European states, the Parti communiste fran\u00e7ais (PCF) underwent a major rethink of its old pro-Moscow Stalinism, what it called mutation. It explicitly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[104,15],"class_list":["post-5217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-uncategorized","tag-archive","tag-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7043,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5217\/revisions\/7043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}