The French presidential election

Here is another longer article, from Murray Smith.

MURRAY SMITH WRITES:

The French presidential election should be seen as a whole. It is of course possible to analyse the results of the first round (1) but they only take on their full significance in the light of the second round. What was at stake in this election was who would succeed Jacques Chirac as president. The candidate who was supported by the Medef (the French employers’ organization) and by the overwhelming majority of the French ruling class and their allies internationally, was Nicolas Sarkozy. Of course if Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal had been elected that would hardly have been a disaster for the French ruling class. Since the early 1980s Socialist governments have alternated with right-wing ones, both pushing forward the neo-liberal agenda of privatization, deregulation and attacks on social protection, as well as attacks on immigrants and democratic rights. The plural left government of Lionel Jospin from 1997-2002 was particularly effective in this regard.

Nevertheless, the ruling class wanted Sarkozy, and for reasons more than its usual instinctive preference for the Right. This was no ordinary election and Sarkozy was no ordinary right-wing candidate. He stood on a programme that was explicitly for change, for a break (“la rupture”) with the presidency of Chirac - who belonged, however, to the same party as him. And he defined very explicitly what he was proposing to change. He announced clearly that he was going to launch an offensive against what is left of the post-war consensus, of the gains obtained by working people at the Liberation. The London Economist, which has a fairly unerring instinct for the interests of its class in Britain and elsewhere, urged Sarkozy to be firm in “taking on unions, insiders [read: public sector workers and others who have some job security], pensioners and others with a stake in today’s over-protected system”. Which is just what Sarkozy has announced he will do.

Grim-faced, leading Socialist Party member Dominique Strauss-Kahn recognized on French TV on election night that the Socialist Party had suffered a serious defeat and pointed out that it was the third presidential election in a row that the party had lost – to the advantage of the Right. But this election was different. In 1995 Jacques Chirac won by promising to overcome the “social fracture” - and proceeded six months later to launch an attack on the social security system that provoked the November-December 1995 strike movement. In 2002 Socialist candidate Jospin was punished for his record in government by being eliminated in the first round. Chirac won the second round by a landslide, mobilizing a broad political spectrum against the far right National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. In both cases he won by presenting himself as something he was not – concerned with social inequality, a bulwark against the National Front – and in both cases his actions as president were in contradiction with his electoral discourse. This time Sarkozy won on an explicit and aggressively right-wing platform – neo-liberal social and economic policies only slightly nuanced by references to defending French industry and French interests in Europe, harsh law and order proposals and an aggressive assertion of the French nation and French national identity with strong racist undertones.

Polarisation

The election saw a high degree of polarisation. Sarkozy fully mobilized the vote of the traditional right and most of the far-right vote – he took part of the National Front vote in the first round and most of the rest of it in the second round. But he made only very limited inroads into the left vote, which largely held up. Royal won 57 per cent of white collar workers and 59 per cent of blue collar workers – though Sarkozy won the votes of a majority of private sector workers, and also of the most low-paid workers. That is not a fact to be neglected, it may indicate a beginning of chipping away the sectors of the working class that are the least organised by the traditional workers’ movement, unions and parties. Among young people, Sarkozy won only 40 per cent of the votes of 18-24 year-olds (15 points less than Chirac in 1995). Indeed, Sarkozy had majority support only among the over-50s, with the notable exception of the 25-34 age group, of which he won 57 per cent. (2).

Significantly, Sarkozy gained his votes largely on a positive basis. According to the survey from which we have just quoted, 63 per cent of Sarkozy’s voters voted for him rather than against Royal, whereas 53 per cent Royal’s voters were above all voting against Sarkozy. Among those who voted for Royal, the sectors whose vote was most motivated by rejection of Sarkozy rather than commitment to Royal were blue and white collar workers.

As is often pointed out, the majority has changed at every legislative election since 1981, as voters rejected neo-liberal governments of both right and left. For presidential elections, the story is not quite the same. Mitterrand was re-elected in 1988, but that was after two years of cohabiting with a right-wing government and parliamentary majority. Chirac was elected in 1995 after two years of a right-wing government, but as we have pointed out, on a demagogic basis. Sarkozy, a minister in a government which has launched a series of attacks on workers, pensioners, immigrants and young people since 2002, and had many more victories than defeats, won by distancing himself from that government only in the sense of announcing a more thorough and consistent programme of attacks. Being elected in such conditions, especially if, as is highly likely, the Right wins a parliamentary majority, represents a break in the sequence of alternating left and right governments. Faced with the chronic incapacity of the Left to offer an alternative rather than just alternating governments, the Right has seized the initiative.

No surprise

If Sarkozy’s victory was bad news, it was no surprise. He led consistently in the opinion polls, both before the first round and between the two rounds. His first round score of 31.1 per cent was well ahead of Royal, who had just under 26 per cent. Furthermore, Le Pen won 10.5 per cent of the vote and another far-right candidate, Philippe de Villiers, won 2.2 per cent. Given that most of those votes were expected to go to Sarkozy, as they did, he approached the second round in a very strong position. What was Royal’s position? She had her own nearly 26 per cent of the vote. That was actually quite a high vote for an SP candidate in the first round. The problem, was, where would the missing 25 per cent come from? The reservoir of votes from candidates on her left who had been eliminated in the first round was far from sufficient, even supposing she won them all (she did win most of them). The total of the votes of the LCR’s Olivier Besancenot, Marie-Georges Buffet of the CP, Arlette Laguiller of Lutte Ouvrière, unitary alternative candidate Jose Bové and Dominique Voynet of the Greens came to just over 10 per cent. So the left total was about 36 per cent. One reason for the low reservoir of votes on the left for the second round was that many voters who actually had more affinity with the radical left candidates chose to “vote usefully” in the first round so as to make sure there was no repeat of 2002, with the Socialist candidate eliminated.

This left the third candidate, the centre-right François Bayrou, who falsely portrayed himself as neither right nor left, in a pivotal position. Bayrou scored 18.5 per cent, nearly three times his score in 2002. Apart from his core base, many people voted for him on the basis of his presenting himself as new and an alternative to the two main parties: others, even some well to the left, just felt that he was better placed than Royal to beat Sarkozy. Royal assiduously courted Bayrou and his electorate between the two rounds, to little avail. The most she got was a declaration by Bayrou that he would not vote for Sarkozy. In fact, Bayrou’s electorate broke down in the second round to approximately 40 per cent Sarkozy, 40 per cent Royal and 20 per cent abstention.

Before moving on to the left candidates, a word about the Royal campaign. Early on in the campaign, she expressed admiration for Tony Blair – not exactly a vote-winner on the French Left. She would no doubt have liked be to the French Blair, and probably still does – her campaign was certainly the most right-wing of any Socialist presidential candidate in the Fifth Republic. But she forgot that Blair was able to be Blair because of two things. First of all Thatcher had carried out the neo-liberal/neo-conservative counter-revolution in the 1980s and smashed working-class opposition. Secondly, Blair’s predecessor, the thuggish Neil Kinnock, had effectively purged the Labour Party. So neither within the party nor outside it did Blair have to deal with any serious opposition. That is not the situation in France. So Royal had to adjust her campaign, tacking tack a bit to the left and a bit to the right, and ended up looking much less coherent than Sarkozy.

In fact the only effective way to combat Sarkozy was frontally, with a programme that systematically countered his – anti-liberal, and capable of countering his law and order and nationalist campaigns.

Unity and disunity on the left

No one could have seriously expected that of any Socialist Party candidate. But following on the victory of the ‘No’ in the European referendum of 2005, a ‘No’ largely brought about by the campaign for a ‘No from the left’ which involved a united front going from the left of the SP via the Communist Party to the LCR and also involving many independents, global justice campaigners, trade unionists, etc., there was a new situation to the left of the SP. The unitary collectives set up to run the referendum campaign survived it and in fact developed even further in 2006 in the perspective of a united anti-liberal campaign for the coming presidential and legislative elections. At their height, the collectives involved about 15,000 people.

As everyone knows, it did not happen, and the result was several candidates. Was this inevitable, and what would have been the potential of a united campaign?

First of all, was it inevitable? Chronologically, the first to pull out of the collectives, in September 2006, was the LCR majority (a substantial minority of the Ligue remained). The reason given was that there was insufficient clarity about participation or not in a future SP-dominated government. This was widely felt outside the LCR - and by the “unitary” minority within it - to be an excuse to get out and stand Olivier Besancenot as an LCR candidate.

Very few of the many articles and documents dealing with the movement of the collectives and the attempt at a unitary candidacy have been translated into English (3) and as far as I know none of the main documents of the collectives have. It seems useful to quote the passages concerning an SP-dominated government from a key document entitled “Ambition-Stratégie” adopted by a national meeting of the collectives in September 2006.

"We will not be part of a government dominated by social-liberalism, which, by its composition and by its project, would not give itself the means of finally breaking with liberalism, would not respond to what people were waiting for. The Socialist Party, in particular, has adopted a programme which turns its back on a clear break with liberalism. It is out of the question, for us, to negotiate on this basis a contract of government whose action, letting people down once again, would lead ineluctably to the return of a harder Right"

And further:

"If we do not take part in the government, our group in Parliament will not take part in a majority made up to support this government, but will vote in favour of any legislative provisions going in the direction of the interests of the population. We will also use our parliamentary strength, along with all those who will take part in social mobilizations, to get a certain number of positive measures adopted or to get negative measures withdrawn; to translate our programme into law and reality. We reserve the right to judge and to discuss publicly how the government and its majority act in the course of the legislature".

In a document written in English to explain the point of view of the LCR majority (4), François Duval, a member of the Ligue’s Political Bureau, wrote:
“There was a single issue about which we were not ready to make a compromise. Not an unlimited series of pretexts: just one simple and single issue that needed - and still needs - an answer, a clear answer, an answer without any ambiguity. As you have surely understood it, the question we raised from the beginning of the process has remained the same: the question of the relationship with the SP, related to government and Parliament. And the answer we wanted to hear was: no, an anti-liberal candidate will not be member of a government led by the SP. No anti-liberal candidates for general elections, if elected as MPs, will either belong to the same parliamentary majority or support a government led by the SP.
We have not heard such an answer”.
And later on: “it [the document] does not clearly state that it will be impossible to join a SP government, nor to support it in the framework of a common parliamentary majority with the really existing SP, its programme and its leadership”.

I find it difficult to read the quotations from “Ambition-Stratégie” above and agree that “we have not heard such an answer” or that the document “does not clearly state”. No doubt the formulations could have been sharper, but they do not seem equivocal. That document was voted for by a broad arc of forces including the Communist Party, which certainly had reservations about it and sought to leave itself a way out. So it is true that as Duval says, “the leaders of the French CP have a double-faced speech”. But the formulation of the document represented the feeling of the collectives on the question> As Duval also admits: “the main problem was not the average mood of activists from the anti-liberal collectives. A significant number of them more or less shared our point of view, even when they thought that we were exaggerating the importance of that issue. The main problem was ¬ and still remains ¬ the political approach of the CP”. In fact, the LCR (and it should have known this) was never going to get a cast-iron guarantee that the CP would never, ever, under any circumstances go into government with the SP. Whether, after the damage participation in government in 1997-2002 did the party, it was actually likely that they would repeat the experience this time is another question. And one which is likely to remain academic, short of a victory of the Left in the legislative elections that would be little short of miraculous. In any case, it is far from evident that on the basis of what was adopted in September, the LCR could not have stayed in and combated the CP, as many independents wanted it to do. That could have led to quite a different situation when the CP tried is takeover in December, which we now come on to.

The role of the Communist Party

The second and fatal blow to a unitary candidacy was the attempt by the CP, in December 2006, to impose its own general secretary, Marie-Georges Buffet, as candidate of the collectives. After the disastrous result of Robert Hue at the presidential election in 2002 (3.37 per cent) following five years in government with the SP, Buffet pulled the party back from the abyss, on a line that combined demarcation from the SP with a readiness to open out and work with other forces. The first notable dividend from this orientation was the result of the list led by Buffet herself at the regional elections in Île de France in 2004, where, coming from behind in the polls, she distanced the LCR-LO list, in spite of the fact that this list was headed by Laguiller and Besancenot. The second success was the leading role the CP played in the referendum campaign in 2005 and the way the party worked loyally with other forces, even sharing its TV time with them. Subsequently the CP participated in the unitary collectives and appeared to seriously think that it could get away with having Buffet adopted as their candidate. When that failed, Buffet carried out a change of alliances. She broke with the refondateur current, with which she had worked throughout the unitary period – a current that is very much in favour of working with other forces on the left and even of moving towards a new movement or party of which the CP would only be one component. She then formed a bloc with the partisans of Hue, who are advocates of a strategic alliance with (really, satellisation by) the SP, and with the so-called “orthodox” current, which stresses the party’s identity but whose orthodoxy does not exclude opportunistic deals with the SP.

Why did Buffet do this? Like many other aspects of the debate around this issue, the answer you give depends a bit on where you are coming from. The LCR majority emphasizes that the CP wanted to have a free hand to negotiate with the SP, and couldn’t be confident with a non-CP independent (or even a CP refondateur) as candidate. That may have been a factor. But a determining factor seems to have been the need to avoid a serious internal crisis with Hue and the orthodox wing if there was no CP candidate – with maybe even the threat of a wildcat Communist candidacy. The LCR majority predicted that the CP would never agree to support a non-CP candidate and that they would stand Buffet, and they turned out to be right. But there was a choice to be made, and the many people who thought it possible that the CP would make a different choice were not being irrational. In the light of the result of the presidential campaign, it is far from certain that Buffet made the right one. If the aim of the candidacy was to avoid a crisis in the party, it only succeeded in putting it off until after the election. It can be argued that if the CP had supported a unitary candidate who, it is safe to say, would have got substantially more than the 1.9 per cent that Buffet got, the party would be in a better position today – including from the point of view of negotiating with the SP over the legislative elections.

Buffet felt confident enough of her position to have her choices submitted to internal ballots of party members. In November they were consulted as to whether the party should propose – not impose – Buffet as candidate of the collectives. The result was 59,103 for, 2.663 against. A month later, faced with the refusal of the collectives to accept Buffet, another ballot was held as to whether she should be a candidate anyway. The result was 42, 365 for, 9.937 against. So Buffet became the candidate of an “anti-liberal unity” in which the CP united with itself. Or rather with part of itself, since the nearly 10,000 who voted against became the basis for the “Unitary Communists” current, which now functions in an increasingly autonomous way.

The withdrawal by the LCR and the failed takeover by the CP left the collectives in disarray. It is this context that must be borne in mind when appreciating the Bové candidacy which began to emerge in January, and which we will come back to later.

The total of the four serious candidates to the left of the SP was just over 8.5 per cent. The total of the LCR, LO and the CP in 2002 was about 13.5 per cent. If you deduct the CP from the 2002 total – a not unreasonable thing to do, since the party was still in government in 2002 – the LCR and LO still got nearly 10 per cent, as against 5.4 per cent this time – to which can be added Bové’s 1.32 per cent. The fact that the LCR more than held its own in a difficult situation should not conceal the fact that the radical left as a whole lost ground – a fact that was commented on with great satisfaction by the bourgeois media, which attached much more importance to that than to the LCR’s relatively good performance..

Two questions arise? Why, and what else if anything, was possible?
First of all, why? This is another case where your answer depends on where you’re coming from. Roughly speaking, if you are coming from the LCR majority or the CP leadership, you emphasize the effect of the ‘useful vote’ for Royal (or even Bayrou). If you are coming from the unitary collectives, the minorities in the LCR and the CP, the Bové campaign, you emphasize the effects of the division on the radical left.

Both were factors. There is not the slightest doubt that the pressure to ‘vote usefully’ limited the vote for the radical left. That was, if you like, an objective factor, in that not even the best campaign could have completely eliminated it. But it seems equally obvious that the fact of having several candidates to the left of the SP actually magnified this tendency and that a united candidacy would have created a dynamic and got a better result than the sum of the parts. Not to everyone. Daniel Bensaïd has argued: “A unitary candidacy on a clear political basis would certainly have had a dynamic that would have been attractive for those who were hesitating, but experience proves that unity is not a simple question of addition, and that a part of the respective electorates of the CP, LO, and the Ligue would not have identified with a unitary candidacy. So we can seriously doubt that in the difficult conditions of this campaign such a candidacy would have had the cumulative result of 8.5 per cent” (5). I find the second part of this reasoning unconvincing. It is no doubt true that there were some sectors of the electorates of the CP, LO and the LCR who would not have voted for a unitary candidate, it is difficult to judge how many. But it seems reasonable to suppose that they would have been more than compensated by the number of hesitant electors who would have been attracted by a united campaign. I have never found convincing the wilder surges of enthusiasm by the partisans of unity, going so far as to predict that a unitary candidate could have got more votes than the SP. But I think he or she would certainly have got more than 8.5 per cent. Between 10 and 15 per cent seems a perfectly realisable objective. At that level, the relationship of forces on the left starts to change, and a serious marker is laid down for the future.

The candidates to the left of the SP

Let us look now at the candidates to the left of the SP. I leave out Schivardi as irrelevant and Voynet because the Greens may be on the left, more or less, but they are hardly to the left of the SP. So that leaves Besancenot, Buffet, Laguiller and Bové.

The most successful campaign was unquestionably Besancenot’s. He got 4.08 per cent, which was marginally less than 2002, but he gained 280,000 votes more because of the higher turnout. His meetings were big. Everyone’s were in this campaign because of the heightened politicisation, but Besancenot’s were frequently twice as big as in 2002 and sometimes bigger. He put across a clear anti-capitalist message, clearly independent of the SP, he was a very capable candidate, there was a professional campaign, an excellent web site, wide coverage in the media. Having decided to go it alone and run its own campaign, the LCR did it very well. In a situation where the overall vote to the left of the SP went down, it more than held its own. And it will no doubt recruit substantial numbers of new members. So in the terms set by its majority leadership, the campaign was a success. Whether from the point of view of building a credible alternative to social-liberalism it was the correct thing to do is another matter. It is worth noting the composition of the vote. It was high among young people – half his electorate was under 35, and he got 10 per cent among those under 25. He also got significantly above his national average among workers and the unemployed. But only 35 per cent of those who voted for Besancenot in 2002 did so again in 2007, 36 per cent of them voting for Royal, 17 per cent for Bayrou. However, Besancenot got 45 per cent of his votes from electors who did not vote in 2002. The rest of his votes mostly came from former LO or CP voters. While it is positive that he was able to appeal to new voters and those who did not vote last time, the high rate of turnover indicates that his electorate remains unstable.

Buffet’s campaign was a disaster for the CP. She came across as neither the candidate of anti-liberal unity she claimed to be, nor as clearly a party candidate. She lost both to the ‘useful vote’ for Royal and to candidates on her left. Vote against the Right? Might as well vote Royal in the first round. Anti-capitalist? Besancenot did it better. Unitary? Why not Bové? (In fact, leading party members campaigned for Bové). Within the party the result has been that Buffet’s new-found allies are turning on her, while her former unitary allies have organised themselves separately. An extraordinary party congress later this year is likely to be dramatic, but not necessarily decisive. The party is headed for a deepening of its chronic crisis, which Buffet only temporarily stemmed.

It is not worth spending too much time on the LO result (1.33 per cent). This very peculiar organisation, with all the characteristics of a sect, occupied for a period an important place to the left of the SP on the electoral level. It did so for a number of reasons, linked to the decline of the CP and the difficulties of the LCR at the time. LO made its breakthrough in the 1995 presidential election, when it got over 5 per cent. But its success did not change its character of a propagandist sect. It stood aside from the massive anti-Le Pen protests in 2002, denounced the European Social Forums and the global justice movement and did not take part in the campaign for a ‘No from the left’ in the European referendum. Its place has largely been taken by the LCR, which differed from it in all those respects and which puts across an anti-capitalist message that is more modern and less economist.

Finally there was the Bové candidacy – the most surprising and unexpected one of the campaign, which clearly irritated both the LCR and the CP. Bové had been one of the possible unitary candidates of the collectives in autumn 2006: he had withdrawn along the way – because he felt that he did not have enough support, because he knew that whatever happened the CP would veto his candidacy. In January there appeared an online petition asking Bové to be a candidate. The method has been criticised by quite a few people, notably Pierre Rousset and Daniel Bensaïd, as being fundamentally undemocratic. It certainly left something to be desired from that point of view. But we have to look at the context. The dynamic behind Bové’s candidacy in January was a lot of angry people from the collectives. I have never seen anything from supporters of the LCR majority or from the CP leadership which took into consideration the independents who had been left high and dry when those organisations decided to present their own candidates. What were they supposed to do? Go home and get on with their lives, choose between Besancenot and Buffet? Not much of a prospect. Whether these people represented a minority or a majority of the independent forces in the collectives is neither here nor there, though they won a majority at a national meeting in January They represented a force that was not ready to accept a fait accompli, and there were enough of them to launch the candidacy. And frankly, given the pressure of time, an online petition was one quick way, and maybe the only way, to break the logjam.

The first thing that was absolutely remarkable was that Bové obtained the 500 signatures of mayors and other elected representatives that were necessary in order to stand. His improvised campaign did in six weeks what it took the LCR and LO nine months to do. And it seems that only 15-20 of the signatures came from the unitary CP, and perhaps a few more from left Greens who supported him. What was the nature of his campaign? The LCR has sometimes referred to it as the “radical ecologist” campaign. That is somewhat inadequate – even Bové was a bit more than that, he was also a global justice campaigner, anti-liberal...And ‘radical ecologist’ really does not anything like cover the diversity of his supporters. The starting point of the campaign was to refuse the division brought about by the LCR and CP candidacies, therefore to be the unitary campaign. It was quickly described by the CP and LCR (including some of its minority) as just another candidacy or even a supplementary cause of division. That is going too far. The Bové campaign was not the unitary campaign. But it was a unitary campaign; It was the only one that brought together people from different backgrounds – part of the LCR minority, most of the Unitary Communists, dissident Greens, trade unionists, ecologists, militants from the collectives. The campaign showed the signs of improvisation, its web site was a nightmare, its communication in general was pretty erratic, but it got most of the main issues right, although Bové occasionally made somewhat eccentric statements, like proposing to appoint the freelance ecologist Nicolas Hulot prime minister... But the campaign had a definite dynamic. It won support from significant figures from immigrant communities and Bové spent a lot of time in the ‘banlieues’ where they live and which were the centre of the riots in November 2005. And especially towards the end, his campaign \attracted big meetings. To take just one example, the LCR rightly congratulated itself on attracting 4,000 people to its meeting in Paris in the last week of the campaign. But the same evening, Bové got between 4,000 and 5,000 in the southern city of Toulouse. Any serious analysis of the Bové campaign should look at its strengths as well as its weaknesses. In spite of its modest score of 1.32 per cent it would be a mistake to simply write it off as a failure. For those who read French, it is worth consulting the very frank and lucid balance sheet of the campaign by Jacques Perreux, Bove’s campaign director and long-time leading CP member (6).


Much has been made of the fact that Bové, between the two rounds, accepted a proposal from Royal to make a report on food sovereignty and that he made his call to vote Royal at a press conference along with her. He would also have spoken at the big SP rally at Charléty before the second round if his campaign team hadn’t stopped him. But his campaign team did stop him, and furthermore issued a communiqué calling for a vote against Sarkozy (not for Royal), stating that it had no illusions in Royal and pointing out it did not assume responsibility for Bové accepting the report proposed by Royal (7). Those who opposed the Bové campaign in the LCR and elsewhere largely publicised Bové’s statements around this time, which certainly show some political confusion, though nothing he did or said implies that he would have supported a social-liberal government. But the communiqué of his campaign team was virtually ignored.

After the victory of Sarkozy

There is now obviously a debate beginning on the French left on how to analyse of the situation after the victory of Sarkozy. Does it represent a move to the right? A change in the relationship of class forces? Is Sarkozy going to be the French Thatcher? It is perhaps useful to look at the original Thatcher. When she came to power in 1979, it was only five years since the last Conservative government had ended ignominiously, wounded and finally brought down by working-class opposition, of which the backbone was two national miners’ strikes. In the subsequent period class struggle remained at a significant level. The arrival in power of a government determined to take on the working class and the unions did not in itself change the balance of class forces. But it did give a serious advantage and the initiative to the most hardline sections of the ruling class. And it still took nearly a decade of class battles, which Thatcher won, taking on one section at a time and aided by the complicity of the Labour leadership. It was only when she took on the whole working class at once with the poll tax, and faced a movement largely led by revolutionaries, that she lost an important battle.

Sarkozy’s victory is not in itself a decisive defeat. There was no significant shift of left electors to the right, there was rather, as we have seen, a polarisation. But Sarkozy will use his position to push through his agenda and we have to look at the situation in which he will do it. It is no use just applauding the combativeness and the anti-liberal sentiments of French workers and youth. The balance sheet of resistance to neo-liberal policies is far from being only positive. A few victories, many defeats, some without a fight: overall the neo-liberal machine advances, we win the occasional battle, they are slowly but surely winning the war. It is surprising to read from the pen of Alex Callinicos, in an otherwise good article, that: “The last major attempt to push through neo-liberal measures in France was in 1995. It provoked a huge public sector strike that was the first in a series of social explosions that have stalled such plans” (8). Unfortunately, this is not quite the case: there have been constant attempts to push through major and minor neo-liberal measures and most of them have succeeded and have not been stalled by social explosions. The 2003 pension reform was a major attack and in spite of a movement that was broader if less intense than 1995, it went through. Its author, by the way, was François Fillon, who has just been appointed as Sarkozy’s prime minister. In a document written after Sarkozy’s victory, François Duval has recently written (in French) a very lucid and realistic contribution on the extent and limits of resistance to neo-liberalism and the relationship of class forces in France today (9).

In reality, after 25 years of attacks, the French working class is in a much weaker material position than the British working class in 1979. The big difference is on the level of political consciousness: contestation of the ruling class agenda, of neo-liberalism, is infinitely stronger, as evidenced by the 2005 referendum and also by the consistently high (over 60 per cent) level of public support for strikes and other movements of resistance. There is also much greater mobilisation and politicisation of young people. But overall, the situation is not favourable. And this mass anti-liberal consciousness has no credible political expression. In this situation, the ritual leftist rhetoric about the ‘third social round’ and general calls to resistance and defeating Sarkozy in the streets are of little use. There will be resistance to Sarkozy’s attacks, there is no guarantee that it will be successful. What is needed is to patiently build a social and political opposition to Sarkozy. Social and political. We will not just defeat Sarkozy in the streets, it is necessary to build a credible political alternative. In the first place, the lack of such an alternative makes social resistance harder. And secondly, if the only alternative to Sarkozy remains the social-liberal Left, then further disillusion and demoralisation are on the way.

Once the legislative elections are over, and assuming the Right wins them, the internal struggles the Socialist Party will start in earnest – they are already rumbling. Over and above personal rivalries, there will be a debate about the future of the party. Some will defend the status quo, some will argue for a thorough “social-democratisation” (really, bringing discourse into line with its neo-liberal practice) of the party and for an opening towards Bayrou and the centre-right. Some will argue for opening out to the non-Socialist left. The relatively weak forces which participated in the unitary collectives until last December are likely to be isolated, with little perspective inside the SP and no alternative that can act as a force of attraction outside it.

The forces of the radical left have a considerable responsibility. It is unfortunately far from clear that they are capable of assuming it. The legislative elections will see around 500 candidates each from the CP, LCR, LO and the Greens (there are 577 constituencies, including the overseas ones). The CP will save some of its 20 or so MPs, the Greens will have three or four, courtesy of a minimal agreement with the SP, the LCR and LO will have none, as a result of the highly undemocratic electoral system. The motivation for this multiplication of candidates (it seems there will be an average of 13 per constituency) is partly financial (state funding depends on how many votes a party gets) and partly just self-affirmation by the parties. But it is not an encouraging sign for the future. The unitary collectives and Bové committees will run about 80 candidates under the label ‘Alternative Left 2007’of whom they say about a third involve real unity with other forces, and will support about 50 other unitary candidates. The LCR will run 460 candidates of its own and support 40 unitary candidates, some of them under its own label. The number of unitary candidates is higher than might have been expected following the presidential campaign, but division prevails.

As for the future…It is difficult to see the CP having either the will or the ability to take any positive initiative in the near future. The LCR will undoubtedly be ready for unity in action against Sarkozy and may well be capable of taking some initiatives in this direction. But it seems unlikely, to say the least, that it will take any serious initiative towards building a broader anti-capitalist or anti-liberal force. The Ligue appears to be concentrating on recruiting from its successful presidential campaign, which it would be foolish not to do. Unfortunately, there appear to be quite strong tendencies towards de facto abandoning of the perspective of a broader party, or at least reducing it to just a larger version of the LCR. We will see over the next few months whether that is in fact the case, as the Ligue is also planning to hold a congress before the end of the year.

It seems unlikely that the forces of the unitary collectives and the Bové campaign will just disappear or disperse. There is a plan to hold a conference in the autumn. It can scarcely just reproduce the unity of a year ago, including the LCR and the CP, as if the presidential campaign had not happened – if for no other reason, neither the LCR nor CP leaderships appear to want that. Nor will it in itself constitute the unitary alternative that is necessary. At best, it may create a movement, a forum for discussion and action, open to members of the CP and the LCR and other organisations, as well as independents , which may be able to help bring that closer. But, overall, what might be called the “French paradox” – the contradiction between the level of social resistance and anti-liberal sentiment and the absence of a broad anti-capitalist party – is likely to continue for some time. But it is likely to become more acute as Sarkozy starts to apply his programme.

Murray Smith

20/05/07



(1) See (in English) Daniel Bensaïd: “Assessment of the outcome of the first round of the French presidential election” (introduction to “The French elections and our strategic project”) IV online 388, April 2007. www.internationalviewpoint.org. Also two articles by supporters of the Bové campaign: John Mullen, “The Presidential elections in France: Polarization and Crisis” http://perso.orange.fr/john.mullen/2007elections.html and Colin Falconer, “Radical left vote falls in French election” , April 28, 2007: http://le-poireau-rouge.blogspot.com. And Murray Smith, “Crunch comes in French presidential elections”, Green Left Weekly, 3 May, 2007 www.greenleft.org.
(2) The figures are taken from the article by Eric Dupin in Le Figaro, 8 May, 2007, Ánalyse: un clivage gauche-droite renforce”.
(3) Those who read French will find practically all the important articles and documents, from before, during and after the presidential election, on the sites www.alternativeunitaire2007.org and www.europe-solidaire.org/.

Stories we missed

One aspect of writing a blog is that there are lots of issues which we don’t get to cover, for reasons of time, and also because perhaps we don’t have anything unique or particularly insightful to say.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t important.

Obviously the French election is extremely significant, including the remarkable 1.8 million votes for the LCR. Olivier Besancenot’s declaration
is published at Liam’s blog.

The excellent progress towards a united socialist party in Venezuela is analysed very clearly by Korakious over at the Squirrel’s lair.

Finally, it is good news that Fidel is seemingly back to good health and making public engagements again. His credentials on green issues are probably better than any other world leader, so his recent attack on biofuels. is a significant contribution to debate.

As Castro argues “reducing and moreover recycling all motors that run on electricity and fuel is an elemental and urgent need for all humanity. The tragedy does not lie in reducing those energy costs but in the idea of converting food into fuel”. He believes that growing fuel to be converted into fuel will further distort the market against the interests of the poor, and increase famine.

It is also worth drawing attention to the fact that Des Warren’s book about his experiences as one of the Shrewsbury Two (along with Ricky Tomlinson) is back in print. There is more background over at Charlie Pottin’s blog .

The Radical Left in Western Europe

This is a bit of a longer piece than we usually publish on this blog, but is an extremely interesting article by Murray Smith:

The Radical Left in Western Europe
Murray Smith
6/04/07

For some years now it has been clear that we are witnessing the appearance on a European, or at least West European, scale, of a series of new political formations on the left. The process is uneven from two points of view. In the first place, between countries: some countries have new political formations at various degrees of development, others have hardly moved, and there have been some false starts. But the process which began in the early 90s and accelerated around the turn of the century has further developed in the last couple of years. The unevenness is also political: some of the new parties are much more radical and explicitly anti-capitalist than others. That only underlines that we are dealing with real political movements, which do not conform to pre-arranged schemas. But it is clear that we are looking at a tendency towards the appearance of a new radical Left on a European level. Over and above the different expressions of this tendency in different countries, the fundamental causes producing new political forces are the same.

How can we define this “radical Left”? Why is it appearing now and not 20 or 25 years ago? And then, radical Left, anti-capitalist Left, anti-liberal Left, revolutionary Left, is it all the same thing? One of the debates in France, which may seem somewhat esoteric from the exterior, but is not without interest, is about whether there is one Left, or two or three or more. There are of course, several Lefts. There are organisations and currents which are explicitly revolutionary, there are parties and other forces which are more or less clearly anti-capitalist. There is a traditional social-democratic Left, not anti-capitalist but anti-liberal and which really believes in reforms. And there is obviously the social-liberal “Left”. The frontiers between these different Lefts are obviously not impermeable, people move in one direction or another. That is actually the only level on which it makes sense to speak of a single Left.

Nevertheless, there seem to me to be two main dividing lines. The first is between currents which are anti-capitalist - that is to say that they are clear that there is no lasting way out of the ravages of neo-liberal capitalism without breaking from capitalism as a system – and those which are not. The latter extend, of course, from currents that merely wish to soften the effects of neo-liberal policies to those who consistently oppose neo-liberal policies, without being convinced that there is an alternative to capitalism, or at least not in the immediate future. Within the anti-capitalist Left there is a difference between those who call themselves revolutionary and those who do not. I will explain later why I think that this difference is less decisive in practice than many people think.

When it comes down to practice, there is a second and much more immediate dividing line. It is between, on the one hand, the Left which has, pardon the play on words, left the left. That is to say, the parties which still claim to be on the left and are still seen as such but which consistently apply neo-liberal policies – the British Labour Party, the German SPD, the French Socialist Party and their co-thinkers in other countries. And there is the Left that refuses the neo-liberal consensus, and which goes all the way from revolutionaries to honest reformists who think it is possible to go back to a more humane Welfare State type of capitalism without challenging the foundations of the system, that is, it encompasses both anti-capitalists and anti-liberals, and shades between the two. It is from this common refusal, this resistance which can be expressed both electorally and on the streets, that we have to start in order to regroup forces to build parties that will challenge capitalism. That does not resolve all the problems, but it creates a framework where they can be resolved in the course of action.

Over the last couple of years we have seen electoral advances by parties of the radical left in a number of countries - from Denmark to Portugal to Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany. But the most striking events on the electoral level took place in two of the most important countries in Europe. On May 29th, 2005, voters in France rejected the projected European constitution, which aimed to set neo-liberal policies in stone. In fact, although the actual victory took place in the polling booths, it was above all the consequence of an energetic and broad campaign for a “No from the left”, a mass political campaign over more than six months. The French “No” was followed a few days later by the Dutch, after a campaign in which the radical Left also played an important role. On September 18th, the new Left Party alliance between the Electoral Alternative for Jobs and Social Justice (WASG) and the PDS in Germany won 8.7 per cent of the vote and 53 deputies, breaking half a century of the monopoly of political representation of the working class in the former West Germany by the SPD. These results caused considerable worry for the European ruling classes, and so they should have: in different ways, the two votes were the expression of a significant current within the working class that rejected neo-liberalism. They were correctly perceived as potential obstacles to the “reforms” or rather counter-reforms, that the ruling class considers so necessary.

What worried our rulers is that both of these events were political. Because, contrary to the ultra-left rhetoric that still marks some of the revolutionary Left, what worries the enemy is not only, or even especially, resistance on a social level. They are used to strikes and demonstrations in protest at this or that measure. Except in exceptional cases they carry on regardless. We occasionally win battles, up to now they have been winning the war. We could look at each country and examine the record of social movements, and see how many of them have actually stopped measures.

France is no doubt the exception that proves the rule. The level of social resistance has probably been the highest in Europe. But it has at most slowed down the neo-liberal agenda, it has not stopped it. Privatisation and counter-reforms of pensions, health insurance and so on have advanced inexorably. The exceptions are few, such as the defeat of the projected CIP (a reduced minimum wage for young people) in 1994 - even the strike movement of November-December 1995 only won a partial victory. And of course at the beginning of 2006 there was the victory over the CPE - a formidable victory for the mass movement, but which should not hide the fact that the CPE was only one element in an arsenal of measures designed to dismantle job protection. Of course, if there was a new May 1968 …but that is unlikely and can certainly not be counted on as a basis for political perspectives. And it is often forgotten that in 1968 there was no credible alternative on the left.

Of course there is no question of denying the importance of social movements. Indeed, the more the new formations win elected positions, the more important it is for them to keep the centre of gravity of their activity outside Parliament. But we need parties which combine the two forms of struggle. Because without politics the social movements run out of steam. That is why it is perfectly sterile for some far-left currents to launch incessant appeals to workers to ‘extend and strengthen the struggle’, etc., without offering them any political perspective. When there is a strong social movement, we should seek to offer it a political perspective. When faced with currents who seek to reduce politics to the institutional framework, we should stress the importance of social mobilisation. We have to walk on both feet. Big social movements can have repercussions on the electoral level, even when they are defeated. French voters took revenge for the defeat of the 2003 strike movement at the polls in 2004. But the absence of political perspectives will leave even victorious social movements without perspectives. In spite of the victories over the European Constitution and the CPE, we are faced with a bleak scenario for the presidential election, with Sarkozy conducting an aggressively right-wing campaign, while Royal is arguably the most right-wing Socialist candidate in the history of the Fifth Republic. Rather like a French version of Thatcher versus Blair. And no credible alternative on the left.

Whether Sarkozy or Royal, or conceivably the centrist candidate Bayrou, wins, there will be a fresh wave of neo-liberal attacks. In this situation, the forces to the left of the SP are providing the sorry spectacle of three candidates issued from the united campaign against the European Constitution, plus the inevitable candidacy of Arlette Laguiller of LO. The French radical Left has lost what is arguably its best chance so far to lay the foundations of a new political force. Whatever the outcome of the elections, and however the various candidates to the left of the Socialist party fare, we have not yet seen all the repercussions of this failure.

Of course, the necessary rebuilding of the workers’ movement cannot be reduced to building new parties. A key factor, and very often the key factor, in the defeat of social mobilisations, is the unwillingness of union leaderships to fully mobilise, either because they basically share the neo-liberal politics of the social-democratic parties or because they are limited to a vision of simply trying to soften the blows. It is also necessary to rebuild the unions on a class struggle basis, articulated with new social movements, associations in the neighbourhoods, etc. But that cannot be seen in isolation from the building of a political alternative. Militants who are armed with a political perspective will be more effective on the social level and parties with roots in the workplaces and social movements will be better able to resist the pressures of institutionalisation.

The first formations of the new Left arose around 1990. As far back as 1989, several formations came together to form the Red-Green Alliance in Denmark. A couple of years later the PRC, which was of course a much more substantial organisation, emerged from a split in the Italian Communist Party. At the height of the tsunami of capitalist triumphalism and the ‘death of socialism’, these organisations represented points of resistance. But it was towards the end of the decade that the radical Left developed further. In fact, it was at the European elections in 1999 and in a series of national elections around the same time that the new Left really became visible in a series of countries – in Scotland, Portugal, the Netherlands and elsewhere. The result of the LCR-LO campaign in France was seen as part of this process, though it was in fact a somewhat different phenomenon, a bloc between two far-left organisations. Since then, parties and alliances of the radical Left have become serious forces in the national political life of several countries.

This brings us back to the question of where the fundamental dividing line lies. Some people think that the fundamental dividing line, today as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow, is between revolutionaries and reformists. Well, yes, in the last analysis…But the essence of Leninism is the concrete analysis of a concrete situation. And concretely in Europe today we are not in a revolutionary situation but in a defensive struggle against the neo-liberal offensive with its concomitant militarist and repressive aspects. And in a situation where the bulk of the political apparatuses apply or accompany this offensive, accompanied by an ideological offensive whose aim is to demonstrate not only that capitalism is the horizon beyond which we cannot go, but also that neo-liberal policies are the only ones that are possible within that capitalism.

It is in this concrete situation that the task of rebuilding the workers’ movement is posed. And the essential task is to bring together the forces which refuse the neo-liberal agenda. Some of the new parties are clearly anti-capitalist, not revolutionary in the traditional (far-left) definition, but they are parties that are rooted in today’s struggles and have a perspective that goes beyond capitalism, towards socialism. Examples are the SSP and the Portuguese Left Bloc. But there are other parties which are less clear politically but whose creation represents a step forward and in which revolutionary socialists should intervene to try and take them forward. An example is the new Left Party in Germany, which is anti-liberal but far from clearly anti-capitalist and in which coexist radically different approaches to the question of governing with the SPD. The exact nature of these new parties, their degree of political clarity, depends on a number of factors – the history and traditions of the workers movement in their country, the level of class struggle and the political landscape, the nature of the political forces involved. But they are where we have to start from.

What is on the agenda in the short and medium term, is not the socialist revolution, but the rebuilding of a political representation of workers starting from responses to the problems with which they are confronted. Since neo-liberalism is the form of really existing capitalism, the need to combat neo-liberalism can be the starting-point for new parties So it can be a question of building parties in defence of public services, against privatizations, war, etc. Nevertheless, since it is impossible to seriously combat neo-liberalism without taking measures that are anti-capitalist, the parties need to become clearly anti-capitalist. We can put it this way: opposition to neo-liberalism can be the basis for action, for alliances and fronts and even for new parties - it depends on the concrete situation. But to actually try and apply an anti-liberal policy that would stop short of attacking the bases of capitalism would be a dead-end. It makes no sense to argue that it is possible to return to a more humane, social capitalism. Even worse would be an alliance with social liberals with the idea of influencing them to the left. The French Communist Party demonstrated the futility of such a perspective in 1997-2002, which has not stopped the PRC going into government with Prodi in Italy. Parties which are not clear on anti-capitalism and class independence may be necessary stages in some countries. But they will remain unstable as long as these questions are not clarified.

Today one of the most potent weapons in the arsenal of the ruling class is of course the refrain that Margaret Thatcher pioneered :“There is no alternative”. This should not be under-estimated when it comes from a chorus encompassing the entire political establishment, including the social-democratic leaderships, and the media. It can lead to resignation, to the idea that all that can be done is to attenuate the course of things but not to reverse it. Even when victorious, social resistance remains on the defensive. Political opposition involves proposing an alternative. It is not just a question of saying “we don’t like what is happening to us” but of saying that something else is possible. One cannot build parties in a durable way only on the basis of refusal, of the negative. And though we can start by saying “another world/Europe is possible” we have to give it a content. It is necessary to propose the perspective of an alternative to capitalism, a perspective of socialism, of course by arguing for it and differentiating it both from the tragedy of Stalinism and the debacle of social democracy.

This brings us to the question of what kinds of party have arisen at different stages in the history of the workers’ movement. It is a commonplace to say that the type of organisation or party that is needed is not always the same, that there is no ahistorical model independent of time and space. Most people would agree with that: nevertheless large sections of the far left have over a period of decades sought to mechanically reproduce the model of the Bolshevik Party, often with quite miniscule groups and in very different circumstances.

It is possible and in my opinion correct to see a progression from the First to the Second to the Third International. There is a progression from fairly elementary forms of working-class organisation – trade unions, political societies, etc. – to mass workers’ parties. And then with the split in international socialism during and following the First World War, to communist parties, which took on a mass character in a series of countries. That is where the progression stops. The crystallised reformist degeneration of the social-democratic parties and the victory of Stalinism posed the question of the creation of new mass parties. The question was posed but not answered. The unfavourable conditions of the 1930s did not permit it and when the Fourth International was founded it brought together only small groups. The unfolding and outcome of the Second World War and the long post-war boom created, in a different way, equally unfavourable conditions.

The Trotskyist movement lived for decades on the perspective of a sort of return to the golden age, where the famous ‘whole layers’ of the working class would break from the treacherous leaderships and converge with the revolutionary nucleus to create mass revolutionary parties. This coexisted or conflicted with periodic illusions (after 1945, after 1968) in the possibility for groups of a few hundred or at best a few thousand to grow in a linear fashion into mass parties. And to a variety of theories as to the necessary or possible mediation via “centrist” parties en route. But the breakthrough never came, neither in the 1930s, nor after 1945, nor after 1968. History had taken a fork, gone backwards and sideways. The much utilised term of “detour” is unsatisfactory. It implies that there is a main road and anything that deviates from it is, well, a detour. But there is of course no predestined high road to socialism. Any illusions on that score should have been dispelled by the experience of the last twenty years. When the much-awaited divorce between the masses and the leaderships began to take place, it was in a way that no one had expected.

To go back to our starting-point, why have forces of the radical Left emerged over the last 10-15 years? And why in Europe – or at least part of Europe? Let us make one thing clear in passing. The recomposition of the workers’ movement and of the Left is not a purely European phenomenon, far from it. It is occurring on a world scale – under the impact of globalisation and the collapse of the Stalinist states and their effects on a whole series of political currents – reformist, nationalist, populist, Stalinist, etc. But this recomposition does not occur in the same way in every part of the world – in Latin America, Asia, Africa or Europe- and does not produce the same kind of parties. It is not a question of saying that what happens in Western Europe is more important or more interesting than elsewhere. You only need to look at Latin America today to dispel any such idea. But Western Europe is important, and above all it is where we are. And it produces parties that are linked to the specific histories of our societies.

We are witnessing the emergence of a new Left in Europe because of the evolution of the old Left faced with capitalism’s turn to neo-liberal globalisation and with the upheavals in international relations. After 1945, in the framework of what can be called a social compromise or the post-war consensus, there were established in a series of countries in Western Europe, models of the social state or Welfare State. Some were more advanced than others. But the overall result was to create economies with significant nationalised sectors, state intervention in the economy, free or almost free access to health and education, unemployment and sick pay, state pensions, virtually full employment and rising real wages. It was a compromise, not exactly between the working class and the bourgeoisie, but between the political and trade union bureaucracies of the workers’ movement and the bourgeoisie. But this compromise brought real benefits to the working class. It was not strictly speaking a West European phenomenon, but also concerned other advanced capitalist countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

So this model was proper to most of the advanced capitalist countries, to different degrees, but with a common base, and it was possible because of their wealth and the long period of capitalist expansion. The model was put into practice by governments of the Right as well as the Left, proof that it was a general orientation of the ruling classes. In fact, as has often been the case with reforms, the new model was a product both of struggle from below and concessions from above. However, the working class considered its own organisations as the surest guarantees of keeping what had been won and extending the gains. So there was a strengthening of unions and parties. The major exception was of course the United States, where concessions were certainly made, but where there was not a European-style Welfare State, nor indeed a mass workers’ party.

What was done after 1945 lasted as long as the unprecedented period of capitalist expansion, until the crisis of 1973-74. This economic and social stability formed the basis for political stability in the workers’ movement. Revolutionaries were exiled to the fringes, a very small minority. Capitalism’s Indian summer was also the golden age of reformism. The traditional parties kept the support of the working class because they were able to deliver. Reformist consciousness is not “natural” for workers. Reformism arose first of all in Britain, then in the other imperialist countries towards the end of the 19th century, for precise reasons which there is not space to go into here. Its hold was severely shaken in the period 1914-45, when there were a whole series of revolutions and revolutionary and pre-revolutionary crises in Europe. But after 1945 its hold became so solid that it survived even the wave of class struggle in several key countries in the period 1968-75. Workers frequently engaged in struggle and sometimes showed revolutionary aspirations, but continued to follow non-revolutionary parties, which while blocking revolutions (very effectively in 1968-75 in France, Italy, Spain and Portugal) continued to defend their gains. This placed objectives limits on the growth of the revolutionary Left. It did grow qualitatively after 1968, first of all from youth and then from a layer of workers. But it never gained a mass base, despite the variety of tactics employed. It is no doubt clearer today than it was then that this was for essentially objective reasons.

The crisis of the 1970s brought about a change in the orientation of big capital. The relative social stability brought about by the post-war consensus became too expensive. Starting with the attacks of Reagan and Thatcher and leading on to the generalised offensive of the last 20 years in the framework of the European Union, the whole of the post-war model began to be dismantled, not of course without resistance and not entirely, so far at any rate. What concerns us here is the role played by the traditional parties of the working class. Without exception , the social-democratic parties joined in the neo-liberal offensive. They did not just “accompany” it, they applied the policies, often with zeal. It is difficult to find a fundamental difference between Aznar and Gonzalez, Major and Blair, Jospin and Juppé. Sometimes, like Schröder in Germany, the social-democrats were even more courageous than the Right in defence of the interests of the bourgeoisie.

So the objective bases for detaching the masses from the reformist apparatuses began to exist. But since real life is always richer than the best theoretical projections, it was not because the masses had swung leftward and broken with the reformists, but because the reformists had swung to the right, abandoning the workers. So at first, and still to a large extent today, a certain space has been created which has not immediately been occupied. As John Rees of the British SWP has written, “millions of workers feel that their traditional home has been taken away from them and they are not sure about the alternative”. The “traditional home” is of course the Labour Party in Britain, but what is said goes equally for other countries.

What could occupy the space thus liberated? Here, vocabulary has its importance: it is a question of occupying a space, which demands political initiative, not just filling a vacuum, an automatic process. One reaction, very evident in France for a period, was to flee politics and fall back on social movements and trade union action. But experience only underlined the necessity of politics. So what political forces could fill this space? Let us look at the possibilities. First of all, left splits from social democracy. Well, overall, what is striking has been the absence or extreme weakness of structured left oppositions in the social democratic parties in reaction to their social-liberal evolution. There are at least two exceptions. First of all in the 1980s there was a real Left in the Labour Party, which had to be broken so that the party could again become a reliable instrument for the ruling class. That was done by Kinnock against a background of the defeats imposed by Thatcher. That was what made Blairism possible. A left split from Labour and the creation of a new party might have been possible in the 1980s. The only, late attempt, the launching of the SLP in 1995, had a real echo, ruined by Scargill’s sectarianism and Stalinism.

Secondly, in France, left currents have continued to exist in the Socialist Party. This is certainly not unconnected to the relatively high level of social resistance to neo-liberalism in that country. Some of these currents, in particular the PRS (“For a Social Republic”) current of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, demonstrated during the European referendum campaign their ability to act concretely on the ground against neo-liberalism. They can be potential components of the emergence of a new political force, if one emerges. But they are unlikely to take the initiative. Faced with the failure to make such a force emerge from the referendum campaign they have retreated, for the moment at least, into the SP.

The essential point is that nowhere has the space created by the social-liberalisation of social-democracy been simply occupied by left splits from these parties. It is important to be precise. There is a difference between organized currents of these parties (as in France) and individuals and small groups who remain in them or leave to go nowhere in particular, but who may be available for a new political force, for example in Germany and to a much lesser extent in England. It is certain that there are still honest militants in the social-democratic parties of Europe. From the moment that these parties adopt neo-liberal politics, they are faced with a choice. To join the new course. To withdraw from politics or fall back on trade unionism. To go elsewhere, but where? The communist parties are in crisis. The far left is often too marked by minority activism and an ideological approach to politics. So some choose to remain. But they do not in general constitute organised left currents. In Germany the WASG was created by trade unionists who were also members or ex-members of the SPD, but they did not emerge within the party as an organised current. Lafontaine joining helped make the new party a pole of attraction for disillusioned SPD supporters. But he did not, either, lead an organised current out of the party.

Then, there are the Communist Parties. Weakened already by the discredit of the Soviet model and by their national policies, they were hit head-on by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. There has been a tendency on the far left to simply write them off as ineluctably doomed to disappearance or to become satellites of social-democracy. Fifteen years after the fall of the Wall and the disappearance of the USSR it seems that the process is longer and more complicated. These parties have undergone different evolutions. At the end of the Second World War, they were the majority parties of the working class in several countries. In the 1980s only the Italian CP was in this situation. The PCF had been reduced to a secondary role by the Socialist Party under Mitterrand, and in Greece, Portugal and Spain, in spite of the antifascist record of the CPs, social-democracy had emerged dominant after the fall of the dictatorships. It was thus parties already weakened or in crisis which were struck by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The smallest became really marginal and some have been on the verge of extinction. But those which had a mass character survived, and a thorough analysis of their evolution is needed. The majority of the Italian CP, principal workers’ party in a country where social democracy was weak, was transformed into the Left Democrats, a centre-left formation. It is the only case where the tendencies to social-democratization of the communist parties, which were (and still are) at work everywhere, went all the way. Elsewhere parties like the PCF and the Greek and Portuguese parties maintain a mass character. One cannot say that these parties defend in a consequent way the interests of the working class, but nor did they simply go over to neo-liberalism. The PCF took part in the social-liberal government of Jospin and was severely punished for it in the 2002 elections. But it came back by operating a turn to the left and a unitary tactic, which enabled it to play a central role in the European referendum campaign and to become an element that it was impossible to circumvent in the debates on how to follow up this victory. The Greek and Portuguese CPs combine outrageous sectarianism with an opportunism that is sometimes disconcerting, but they are not neo-liberal parties.

It has to be remembered that the CPs always had a more active and militant base than the SPs. Today the PCF has been marginalised electorally by the SP and is in competition on this terrain with the far left. But its influence on the ground is still significant and out of all proportion to its national electoral results. The essential point is that the communist parties with mass influence did not collapse or simply join the social democracy. We can work on the hypothesis that they will not simply disappear, not even automatically with the appearance of a new radical Left force. Depending on the situation, they will form part of it, or they will split and part of them will do so, or else they will maintain a sectarian stance and are likely to be progressively marginalized. But nowhere where these parties represent a force will we build new parties without engaging with them and their militants.

Let us come back to the nature of the distance between the social-democratic parties and their traditional social base. We have said that initially it was not the masses who moved but the parties, leaving their social base stranded. So in the beginning the refusal of neo-liberalism developed without political representation. It was expressed by the advanced layers through social resistance, sometimes by the appearance of new social movements, and by a rejection or avoidance of politics. This rejection was expressed at a mass level, by the rise of abstentionism in working class areas, and by many other workers simply voting for social democracy as a lesser evil. It was only later and gradually that the absence of a political alternative started to be felt. For those who want to propose a political alternative to neo-liberalism, it is a question of going to find people where they are, i.e. starting from their refusal of neo-liberalism, to offering them a political perspective. Apart from forces coming from social democracy and the CPs, there are other forces who will be part of new parties - ecologists, trade unionists, global justice campaigners, etc., and there are also the currents of the far Left.

The "traditional" groups of the far left cannot in themselves constitute an alternative, for a number of reasons. The tens and hundreds of thousands of people who are in search of a political alternative will not be won directly to a revolutionary programme. Not to mention the fact that many far-left groups maintain ways of functioning that are antipathetic to militants from other traditions and to ordinary workers. They therefore have to work with other and anti-capitalist and anti-liberal forces to build coalitions, fronts, parties. Some revolutionaries would argue that it is impossible to unite reformists and revolutionaries in one party and that there are ‘strategic differences’. But what actually divides those who define themselves as revolutionaries from other socialists? Two things. In the first place they understand that you can not simply take the machinery of the capitalist state and use it for the transition to socialism – though many left reformists also understand that, more or less clearly. Secondly, the Trotskyist groups especially have a solid theoretical heritage, which applied in a non-dogmatic way is still largely relevant. Neither of those things prevent them working in parties with others who do not share those characteristics. It is perfectly possible, and it can be verified in practice, for many militants who do not define themselves as revolutionary and are not members of any group to have a class struggle approach which often extends, for example, to an understanding that it is wrong to enter social-liberal governments.

The term “strategic differences” between reformists and revolutionaries could imply that both revolutionaries and reformists have a strategy. That is very much open to question. Which reformists are we talking about? If it is the social-liberals, they have no strategy for the transition to socialism, they share the strategy of the capitalists, to which at best they give a social veneer. If it is the anti-liberals, I think it is very questionable that the French CP for example has a strategy. Oscillating between mobilising against neo-liberal policies and collaborating with the SP is hardly a strategy. As for revolutionaries, clarity about the nature of the bourgeois state, an understanding of the need for extra-parliamentary mobilisations, self-organisation and their theoretical heritage does not amount to a strategy. No revolutionary organisation in Western Europe has one, and for a very good reason. We are operating in advanced capitalist countries with a long tradition of bourgeois democracy, and no socialist revolution has ever taken place in such a country. For one to succeed it is reasonable to suppose that a mass party will have to be built and that that party will have to combine parliamentary and extra-parliamentary work and solve a series of tactical problems in the course of experience, problems which have only begun to be posed in some cases.

The debate that is beginning in the LCR, in the pages of Critique Communiste and elsewhere, underlines this. It raises many questions and it can be fruitful. But the result will not be that the LCR will have a strategy to take us from now to the socialist revolution. Hopefully it will have a better idea of the kind of party and the kind of tactics that will have to be combined to help work out such a strategy with the aid of practice.

There is therefore no reason why revolutionary Marxists cannot work with other militants in a party that is fighting really existing capitalism and trying to outline a socialist alternative to resolve these problems together. Especially since we are in a phase of resisting a capitalist offensive and fighting for reforms. Reformism and revolutionary politics may be antinomic, but reform and revolution are not, they are, as Rosa Luxemburg pointed out a long time ago and as Claudio Katz has more recently underlined, two phases of the class struggle.

Existing revolutionary organisations can make a decisive contribution to the building of new parties, but there is no guarantee that they will. Experience has shown both examples of where the far left has made the key contribution, or an important one, to building new parties (Scotland, Portugal, Denmark), others where it has consistently failed to do so (France…) and the case of England which is between the two. The problem is that in order to make such a contribution these organisations have to change in a number of ways. They have to leave behind a mentality that was formed when they were beleaguered revolutionary minorities faced with the bureaucratic apparatuses, seeing themselves as the nucleus of future mass parties, with the idea that everyone had to be won to their politics. This approach was always flawed; it is quite unadapted to a period when it is a question of replacing these parties, of building new mass parties with other forces on a basis of equality, and of revolutionaries taking account of the fact that they might actually learn something from these other forces. There is also a fundamental question which concerns the larger revolutionary organisations. If they are going to contribute to building new parties they will have to cease to exist as independent entities and become currents within them. That is a big step when you have built a sizeable organisation and an apparatus (press, printshop, premises, etc.) and there is a certain conservatism, a certain reticence to take risks. Which is entirely understandable but plays a negative role.

In the current state of affairs, the most advanced parties of the radical left in Europe are probably the SSP in Scotland, the Portuguese Left Bloc and the Danish Red-Green Alliance. These parties are clearly anti-capitalist, for socialism. They are parties which have succeeded in rooting themselves in the social and political combats of their countries by projecting an image and a vision of socialism that breaks from Stalinism and social democracy. And they have succeeded in building parties which if they are not yet mass parties, have a mass audience, and in winning elected positions in parliaments and local councils. In Scotland and Portugal the initiative for new parties was taken by revolutionary Marxist organizations - SML in Scotland, the UDP and the PSR in Portugal - which had first of all the will and then enough weight to play this role and to attract other components (coming from the CP in Portugal, of various origins in Scotland) which could not have taken the initiative alone and whose forces would undoubtedly otherwise have dispersed. These organisations are quite explicitly anti-capitalist and they have the potential to grow, which does not exclude future regroupments. But there are other cases where the arc of forces is wider and the politics less defined in an anti-capitalist sense. That is most clearly the case in Germany. If these parties involve broad forces, it may be that not just revolutionaries but consistent anti-capitalists will be in a minority and there will be sharp battles to be fought.

It is not a question here of making an exhaustive list of the whole European radical left, but of looking at some specific cases. We have said that the most advanced cases were those where the revolutionary Marxists had played a leading role. These are not models to be slavishly followed independently of national circumstances, they are examples of successful initiatives. There obviously exist other cases, other types of parties, failures, half-successes. Let us look at some of them.

In England, the building of a force of the radical left has known failures and half-successes - the failure of the SLP, the experience of the Socialist Alliance which did not fulfil all its potential. The creation of Respect marked a new stage. Respect is the product of the antiwar movement, not in the sense that it involves all the forces of this movement, but in the sense that the forces which make it up started to work together in this movement. If the principal political force is the SWP (the section of the FI is also present) the element which makes Respect qualitatively different from the Socialist Alliance is the involvement e of important forces coming from the Muslim population. That has led to some criticism in England and much on the French Left, the balance sheet of whose relationship with the Muslim population hardly authorizes it to give anyone lessons. It is true that most of the areas where Respect obtained its best results have important Muslim populations, which were strongly committed to the antiwar movement. However it is clear that the programme of Respect is not addressed only to Muslims, and does not speak only about the war but also about social questions (which also concern Muslims...) Respect’s references to socialism are more than vague (this appears now to be intentional on the part of the SWP) but it is certainly clearly opposed to really existing neo-liberal capitalism, which is a good starting point.

The real problems lie elsewhere. It appears that the policy of the SWP is to keep Respect as a loose coalition, in spite of declarations like that of John Rees at the end of the "Marxism 2005" event, "Respect must become a mass party of the working class”. The result is that its programme has not evolved much and its internal democracy leaves a lot to be desired. Respect does not seem to be growing and in particular is not attracting serious trade union support. It needs to become a real party with a programme and democratic structures, with respect for pluralism. The criticisms made by the Respect Party Platform and of Socialist Resistance in this respect are correct.

The Party of Communist Refoundation in Italy is a party of tens of thousands of members, with an important group of deputies. It remains strongly marked by its origins in the PCI, but was able to integrate important forces coming from the far left, as well as many new members and to link up with the global justice movement. Its imminent degeneration was often announced by those who specialize in this kind of prediction. But until 2004 its trajectory was overall towards the left and a break, not complete but real, with Stalinist culture. However it has subsequently evolved rightwards and joined the centre-left government of Romano Prodi. This has produced strong tensions and a crisis in the party, which places big responsibilities on its left wing.

A particular case is that of the Socialist Party of the Netherlands. As its name does not necessarily suggest, it is a formation of the radical Left. It was originally a Maoist group which made the decision the 1980s to build a broad socialist party. It played a leading role in the victory of the "No" in the referendum over the European Constitution. Today the SP claims over 50,000 members. It has made big gains in local and national elections over the last year and now has 25 deputies in a Parliament of 150. Such an evolution of the relationship of forces starts to pose, without solving it, the problem of going from a radical opposition to neo-liberalism to the need to represent an alternative to it. The SP’s choice is to proclaim its readiness to govern, preferably in a coalition with the social democrats, possibly even with the Christian Democrats, though not on any terms. It has therefore remained outside the new Social Democrat-Christian Democrat coalition government. But whatever criticisms cane be made of the SP, its success underlines one thing. When you are seriously challenging the social democrats as the first party of the Left (which is the case), it is quite impossible to avoid the question of governmental participation, and you have to say clearly why you will not go into government and on what conditions you would.

Important developments are now taking place in a key country, Germany. Since the unification of the country, the PDS has incarnated the resistance of a large part of the population of the ex-GDR to the consequences of the restoration of capitalism. This party has many defects - it takes part in regional coalition governments with the SPD, its cadres remains essentially those of the old single party, the SED. It however continues to have an important base of support in the ex-GDR. But its particular history means that the PDS never penetrated in the West, wherein lies the importance of the emergence of the WASG: the alliance won 8.7 per cent of the vote and 53 deputies at the federal elections September 2005. The definitive fusion of the WASG and the PDS appears to be on course for June. It is by no means an anti-capitalist force , but clearly anti-liberal. And just as the SSP and the Left Bloc are advanced examples, the forces which launched the new party also determine its political content, but in the direction of limiting it to a left Keynesian reformism. However, the essential thing is that something is moving moves in what was before a political desert and that this party has a real echo among workers. The forces of the far left in Germany which take part in it are certainly right to do so.

It is certainly in France that the contradiction between the high level of social resistance - but also political resistance, as was shown in the referendum campaign - to neo-liberalism and the absence of a broad anti-capitalist force is the most obvious. The "No" campaign was carried by a broad coalition, with a movement of hundreds of unitary collectives involving up to 15.000 people, which even took on new life and expanded in the run-up to the 2007 elections, adopting programmatic documents and aiming to present candidates in the presidential and legislative elections. But first the LCR withdrew to run its own candidate and then the CP made a clumsy attempt to have its general secretary adopted as presidential candidate, which the movement refused. This led to sharp conflicts and to situations of crisis in both the LCR and the CP, and seriously dislocated the movement. The attempt to overcome this situation through the candidacy of Jose Bove is laudable but perhaps too partial and too late. However, the movement for unity of the anti-liberal Left is not dead and will re-emerge in the coming period. And whatever the results of their candidates, the conflict in the LCR and CP is not over either. There is no doubt that the LCR carries part of the responsibility for this situation. In principle, it is committed to the perspective of building a new anti-capitalist force. However , even before the current elections, it has never succeeded, not only in concretising this perspective, but in taking an initiative that is even a little bit serious. The reasons advanced for this, variously the objective situation and political obstacles, are very much open to question.

There exists a coordination of anti-capitalist parties, the European Anti-Capitalist Left (EACL), whose coordinating group consists of the SSP, the Left Bloc, the RGA and the LCR. There is also the European Left Party (ELP), which brings together some of the former (and some who still are) CPs and left reformist parties, who are not necessarily very radical, not neo-liberal but not really independent of social democracy. But the borders between the two international groupings are not watertight. The PRC and the Greek coalition Synaspismos form part of the ELP but have sometimes attended, as observers, the meetings of the EACL. The Left Bloc is also now a member of the ELP, as is Respect. Though it is certainly the EACL which it is necessary to build, it is also necessary to know to maintain a flexible relationship with the components of the ELP. And there is now an initiative from the Dutch SP, which is not affiliated to either the EACL or the ELP, to convene an international meeting this summer.

What is called the radical Left thus covers very different realities. We can define it as consisting of all the forces and all the currents which refuse neo-liberalism. In it there are parties that are explicitly anti-capitalist, but there is not always a clear line of demarcation between anti-capitalist and anti-liberal. Between having rather general anti-capitalist and socialist references and integrating the anti-capitalist dimension into the everyday life of the parties there can be some distance and even a range of situations.
The final goal is not to build broad parties for the sake of it, but to build parties comprising significant forces which in the long term, undoubtedly after many differentiations and conflicts, will be able to lead processes of socialist transformation, therefore to become revolutionary parties. But this evolution cannot be imposed against the rhythm of development of the class struggle and of the evolution of political consciousness. It is a question of advancing towards such parties by working out a political strategy through many social and political battles. The role of revolutionary Marxists is to take things forward in this direction, to build these parties while making their contribution in the fields of programme and practice. At the beginning it seemed that the task was simply to bring together forces and build anti-capitalist parties. But reality has shown that in some cases, Germany certainly, France if the process restarts, it will be les sharply defined than that to start with. That is worth living with if a real political force can be built. There is a French saying, “the best is the enemy of better” i.e. if you try for the maximum you will miss the chance of a real step forward of the movement, which as Engels said, is worth ten programmes. Many debates, and even sharp battles, can be conducted within a common framework.

How revolutionary Marxists intervene in these parties will depend to a large extent on the concrete context in which they have to act. The intervention of a revolutionary Marxist current will not be the same in the SSP or the Left Bloc or the RGA as in Rifondazione, where it is a question of combating an erroneous orientation. It will be different again in the new party in Germany. But it is in these real processes, which begin to touch the mass of workers and to make things change, that revolutionaries must engage today.

Murray Smith

6/04/07

Racism and Fascism in France

There's a disturbing report of political opinion in France being carried by Doug Ireland's excellent US-based blog Direland - even after the triumph of the student and worker struggles against the CPE - headlined as 'FRANCE: ONE-THIRD IDENTIFY WITH NEO-FASCIST RIGHT IN NEW POLL' based on an IFOP poll in the Metro newspaper.

Immigration and crime are the key issues and indicate a predictable 'heightened climate of racism in France since last fall's ghetto riots' and '[t]he resurgence of that violence on the margins of the two successful nation-wide general strikes against a reactionary youth labor contract last month -- even though that much-televised disorder was mostly generated by only a few hundred ghetto youths out of millions of peaceful demonstrators -- also contributed to the increase in security hysteria and anti-immigrant sentiments this new poll' .