On
October 20, when President François Hollande of the Socialist Party (PS) (down
to 23% in the latest polls) appeared on national television to offer Léonarda
right of return to France without her family, he simply made matters worse for
himself. “With her mother and sisters”, insisted PS secretary Harlem Desir. This
difference between government and party didn’t matter for long. From Albania
the 15-year-old Léonarda told Hollande where he could put his offer.
As
Hollande’s authority nosedives even with PS faithful, that of interior minister
Manuel Valls, the “hard man” stuck with the thankless job of expelling “illegals”,
keeps rising. An October 24 Figaro
poll had Valls as preferred president after the next election (2017), at 33% to
Hollande’s 9%.
The
rise of the FN at the expense of the UMP and PS has been deepening divisions
within all main political trends. UMP leaders and candidates have been trying
to beat Le Pen at her own game of race hatred and exclusionary nationalism
while ministers within the ruling Socialist Party (PS) government have been at
loggerheads over the treatment of Léonarda.
Left Front alliance debates
Within
the opposition Left Front (Front de Gauche) a debate has opened up over how to orient to the rightward-moving
PS. This debate is also being driven by the failure of the Left Front to make
any major gains in by-elections held since the May-June 2012 presidential and
National Assembly elections.
Most
importantly, between October 17 and 19, Paris region members of the Communist
Party (PCF), the main force along with the Left Party (Parti de Gauche) in the
nine-party Left Front, voted to maintain their party’s present alliance with
the PS in the Paris council for the March 2014 municipal elections in France.
This
decision, taken by 57% to 43%, represented a break with the strategic line of
the Left Front. This is to have Left Front tickets in all towns with over
20,000 inhabitants and to support the inclusion of other left forces on these
tickets only if they take a clear stand against the austerity policies of the national
PS government of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.
(In
municipal elections, the two-round French voting system allows the Left Front
to stand in its own name in the first round, while supporting PS candidates
against right-wing tickets in the second round if its own vote is less than
10%. If the Left Front vote is more than 10% it is free to withdraw, stand again,
or seek to negotiate a joint ticket with other forces.)
The
PCF’s Paris decision was possible because the party’s national leadership had
earlier decided that the alliance policy for the 2014 municipal elections would
be decided by local membership vote. Yet the Paris decision, supported by
national secretary Pierre Laurent, has been causing angst among Left Front
supporters, opening the most serious crisis in its four-year history. It has
also opened sharp conflicts within the PCF itself.
The
reaction from the Left Party leadership was one of outrage. Left Party national
secretary and deputy mayor of Paris’s 12th arrondissement
(ward) Alexis Corbière asked:
“Now that the young people have risen up against the inhuman consequences of
the policies of Manuel Valls, how is it possible to be on a common ticket with
his friends in Paris?”
Paris is not France
Will
the Paris region PCF vote remain an exception, or does it prefigure a return to
the pre-Left Front norm of PCF-PS alliances, especially where these have run
major towns?
While
many PCF town branches have still to vote on their approach, decisions to date
indicate that the Paris decision may well turn out to be more exception than rule.
On October 25, L’Humanité carried the
news that PCF members in Lyon, France’s second largest city, had voted 52.9% in
favour of a Left Front ticket for the municipal poll, rejecting a deal over
program and seats similar to that accepted in Paris.
According
to an October 27 L’Humanité article
by Left Party national secretary Eric Coquerel, in “nearly three-quarters of
the towns with 100,000 inhabitants” local PCF ballots had supported the option
of a Left Front alliance.
At
the time of writing (November 5), PCF members’ decisions in towns of more than
100,000 inhabitants was as shown in Table 1.
Table 1. PCF
decisions on alliances for 2014 French municipal elections
(towns over 100,000, at November 5, 2013)
|
Town
|
Region
|
Inhabitants
(2010)
|
Decision
or likely decision
|
|
A. Towns
with existing SP- or Greens (EELV)-led majority (in many cases including PCF
councilors)
|
|
Paris
|
Île-de-France
|
2,250,000
|
With PS
|
|
Lyon
|
Rhône-Alpes
|
484,000
|
With Left Front
|
|
Toulouse
|
Midi-Pyrénées
|
442,000
|
Undecided, but leadership has
rejected Left Front. Decision on November 16
|
|
Nantes
|
Pays de la Loire
|
285,000
|
To be decided, with leadership
favouring PS
|
|
Strasbourg
|
Alsace
|
282,000
|
With Left Front
|
|
Montpellier
|
Languedoc-Roussillon
|
257,000
|
With Left Front
|
|
Lille
|
Nord-Pas-de-Calais
|
228,000
|
To be decided
|
|
Rennes
|
Brittany
|
207,000
|
To be decided, with leadership
favouring PS
|
|
Reims
|
Champagne-Ardenne
|
180,000
|
Still to be decided. Council
group leader leaning towards the PS.
|
|
Saint-Étienne
|
Rhône-Alpes
|
171,300
|
Local leadership leaning
towards PS
|
|
Grenoble
|
Rhône-Alpes
|
155,600
|
With Left Front
|
|
Angers
|
Pays de la Loire
|
147,600
|
Leadership proposal for
alliance with PS. To be voted November 6
|
|
Dijon
|
Burgundy
|
151,200
|
With Left Front
|
|
Brest
|
Brittany
|
141,300
|
With PS
|
|
Le Mans
|
Pays de la Loire
|
142,600
|
With Left Front
|
|
Clermont-Ferrand
|
Auvergne
|
140,000
|
With Left Front
|
|
Amiens
|
Picardy
|
133,400
|
With PS
|
|
Tours
|
Centre
|
134,800
|
Still to be decided. Proposal
to go to citizens meeting, November 7
|
|
Limoges
|
Limousin
|
139,100
|
With Left Front
|
|
Villeurbanne
|
Rhône-Alpes
|
145,000
|
With PS
|
|
Metz
|
Lorraine
|
120,700
|
With Left Front
|
|
Besançon
|
Franche-Comté
|
116,900
|
With PS
|
|
Caen
|
Lower Normandy
|
109,000
|
To be decided
|
|
Rouen
|
Upper Normandy
|
110,900
|
With Left Front
|
|
Argenteuil
|
Île de France
|
103,100
|
With Left Front
|
|
Montreuil
|
Île de France
|
102,700
|
With Left Front
|
|
Saint-Denis
|
Île de France
|
106,700
|
Left Front supporting PCF
mayoralty
|
|
B. Towns
with existing right-wing majority
|
|
Marseille
|
Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur
|
850,000
|
With Left Front
|
|
Nice
|
Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur
|
343,300
|
With Left Front
|
|
Bordeaux
|
Aquitania
|
239,200
|
With Left Front
|
|
Le Havre
|
Upper Normandy
|
175,500
|
With Left Front
|
|
Toulon
|
Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur
|
164,500
|
With Left Front
|
|
Nîmes
|
Languedoc-Roussillon
|
142,000
|
With Left Front
|
|
Aix-en-Provence
|
Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur
|
141,400
|
With Left Front
|
|
Perpignan
|
Languedoc-Roussillon
|
117,400
|
With PS
|
|
Orléans
|
Centre
|
114,167
|
With Left Front
|
|
Mulhouse
|
Alsace
|
109,600
|
With Left Front
|
|
Boulogne-Billancourt
|
Île de France
|
114,200
|
Not yet decided
|
|
Nancy
|
Lorraine
|
105,421
|
Not yet decided
|
| |
|
|
|
|
Sources:
Regional French media, regional PCF and Left Party web sites, L’Humanité, Libération, Le
Monde, blog Politiquemania, web site Regards.fr.
The vote to
date has exposed the tensions between the recommendations of local PCF
leaderships and the sentiment of many PCF members, who place more value on the
political potential of the Left Front than on maintaining the PCF’s present council
representation.
(The PCF has 1709
council seats in metropolitan France, and 1857 when the “overseas territories
and departments” such as Tahiti are included. There are 88,298 council
positions in France and its “overseas possessions”.)
To date
membership votes overturning leadership recommendations have taken place in
Lyon, Montpellier, Le Mans and Évry. Lead PCF candidate for Lyon, Aline
Guitard, explained the vote like this: “The members judged that what was being
proposed with the PS didn’t allow a stronger fight against austerity.”
In
response to that decision, according to the October 30 Le Monde, eight local PCF councilors denounced the “vote of split”,
threatening not to take part in a “reductionist” ticket. In Le Mans, outgoing
PCF councilors said they would continue to negotiate with the PS majority.
In other
centres, like Perpignan, the threat of a victory of the right or far-right (FN)
convinced members that a first round alliance with the PS was a political
necessity. According to lead candidate Philippe Galano: “It’s reckless to say
that the forces of the left, if disunited in the first round, could compete
with the UMP and the FN in the second.”
In the light
of these trends an interesting question is whether the Paris line would have
carried if there had been a single national ballot of the whole PCF membership.
PS—best builder of the FN
How
are all these dramatic developments related? The underlying issues are how to
reverse support for the FN and how to orient to the PS when rapidly deepening
disillusionment with the Hollande presidency—elected 18 months ago for its
promise of “Change, Now!”—is what has most fed the growth in FN support.
Le
Pen’s outfit is seen by increasing numbers of angry people in France as the one
party untainted by connections with the political establishment and with an
understandable message.
Nonetheless,
for sociologist Eric Fassin, writing in the October 24 Le Monde, the rise in FN influence “refutes the hypothesis of a
rightward shift in society--cultural or economic”. Rather the FN is gaining a
hearing because of the growing desperation of people ground down by austerity,
because of the persistent, 30-year-long retreat of the official “parties of
government” before the FN message, and because the alternative left message
isn’t yet audible or believable enough.
The
FN’s “discourse” evokes a mythical French paradise lost that flourished before
the arrival of globalisation, the European Union and the euro currency; when the
country had its franc, there was discipline in the classroom, respect in the
family and order in the suburbs, and the necks of serious criminals met the
guillotine.
That
belle époque—destroyed by one-parent families, homosexuality
and homosexual marriage, lax immigration laws and oppressive political
correctness—can be restored by a sane and healthy “people” led by the FN rising
up against the “politicians” and their parties.
Over
the years the reaction of the governing elites has been to sneer and pretend
outrage at this message, while combing through the concrete issues on which to
make the concessions that could hopefully steal away some of the FN’s support
base.
Predictably,
the area where FN policy has most passed into the mainstream is that of migrants’
and refugees’ rights. French policy is among the most restrictive and
discriminatory in Europe.
The
long-run political effect of this combination of empty moralising and concrete concessions
to the FN’s racist policies has been to add to the political authority of the
FN as the party that has been doggedly putting its finger on French society’s “real
problems” for decades.
Now,
UMP candidates openly compete with the FN in racist vileness while the media
feel no shame in pillorying entire communities such as the Rom.
The
events of October produced a speed-up in this syndrome, a race to the bottom
between the UMP and PS over migrants’ and refugees’ rights. On October 24, UMP
leader Jean-François Copé proposed that the right to French citizenship of
children born to migrants be repealed—a 25-year-old demand of the FN—and that free
medical service for “illegals” be confined to emergency situations.
One
day later, minister Valls announced that he would produce a “reform” of the
system of political asylum by mid-November.
To
complete the pantomime, PS national secretary Desir (once leader of the
powerful campaign movement SOS Racisme!) declared: “I say the FN is a party of
the extreme right!”
As
for Leonarda Dibrani, the saturation message from the mainstream commercial
media was that she had it coming. What could you expect from someone whose
father was a classic “gypsy bad dad”—happy to live on social security payments,
showing no sign of looking for work or interest in jobs offered him, not sure whether
his kids are at school, and with three different versions of why he couldn’t
produce an identity card?
Debates in the Left Front
Such
is the atmosphere in which the Left Front has been battling to get its anti-capitalist
message through to people drawn to FN simplicities. It helps explain why the strategy
debate within the Left Front, centred on where and how to look for the broader
alliances that will win it hegemony over the PS and enable the Left Front to be
seen as an alternative for government, has become so sharp.
In
an October 21 blog comment, Mélenchon summarised his view of the situation
facing the organisation after the Paris PCF decision: “At the level of Paris,
the situation is simpler than it appeared—the Left Front continues with [lead
candidate] Danielle Simonnet. There will be a pluralist ticket for the
municipal elections, hundreds of activists and sympathisers will get involved
among whom no doubt there will be a considerable number of communists.
“But
at the national level, the situation is much more complicated. The loss of
visibility is terrible for us. It helps the extreme rights present itself as
the only alternative to the system.”
In
the October 16 L’Humanité, before the
PCF Paris vote began, the Left Front leader had insisted: “We are not in a logic
of wheeling and dealing, but of political and ideological conquest. For us the
local and the national are the same reality.”
Asked
about local tickets between the Left Party and the Greens, he contrasted these
with what the PCF was proposing for Paris: “The line is to bring together
everything we can against austerity and for solidarity rather than curling up
on the old turf of alliance with the ‘Solferians’, who repel anything that
moves or fights in the country… I am opposed to the unilateral surrender of our
forces for the sake of a single town.”
The
PCF leadership viewpoint previously had come in an interview in the October 14 Le Parisien
where Pierre Laurent said: “It’s not a question of allying with the people who
are carrying out the government’s choices, but of creating on the ground a
coalition of men and women of the left who don’t identify with this austerity
policy. These voters, who could come from the ranks of the socialists or
ecologists, have the feeling of being trapped. It’s not the time to shut
ourselves off in our own domain, but to extend them a hand.”
Concretising
the PCF perspective at the September L’Humanité
Fair, Laurent had said: “To build 500,000 extra public housing units, to
open health centres, to build new systems of public transport, to create new
networks of solidarity where communities are being torn apart, for my part I am
ready to take part in the broadest coalitions of the left if that is in the
interest of the people.”
As
for the future of the Left Front, thrown into doubt by this conflict between
its two main affiliate organisations, Laurent said: “I fight with all my
strength against the idea that a difference of assessment over the municipal
elections opens a crisis in the Left Front. We need the Left Front for today
and for the future. So let’s stop polemicising, dramatising, and caricaturing
each other’s positions.”
An
October 21 statement by the PCF leadership, called “A Big Ambition for the Left
Front”, proposed that the front adopt four campaigns in order to revitalise its
work and draw in broader forces. These are an exposure campaign around the cost
of capital; a campaign for fiscal justice; a campaign around the need for new
solidarity- and democracy-based foundations for Europe; and a campaign for a
Sixth French Republic.
Mélenchon
has not been so sanguine. Describing the PCF Paris choice as “strategically
incompatible” with the Left Front’s approach, the PG leader was appearing to
signal a struggle against “a small minority, yes prestigious and well placed,
that has abandoned us” even while “the unitary dynamic of the Left Front
remains overwhelmingly in the majority in the rest of the country”.
Mélenchon
also reminded readers of L’Humanité that
the PS, while making endless calls for the “unity of the left”, was conducting
a sectarian crusade against Communist and Green mayors, especially in the Paris
“red belt” around Seine-Saint-Denis, Argenteuil and Saint Denis.
In an
October 26 article on his blog titled “For whom tolls the bell?”, the Left Party
leader reflected on the impact of the of the PCF Paris decision and on Pierre
Laurent’s possible motives for conducting negotiations with the PS without
informing other Left Front organisations.
“A
lot of my friends are flabbergasted and bewildered. All are struggling to work
out what has happened. How could Pierre Laurent lie to us for months while he
was selling the Eiffel Tower to [PS lead candidate and Paris deputy mayor] Anne
Hidalgo?
“With
what criteria and what collective goal? If alliance with the Socialists is his
collective goal, why not trade off Paris for peace in towns with communist
leaderships, under attack from the Socialists in the municipal elections? Why
did he get personally engaged to the point of pushing for a national dramatisation
of the stakes involved? Why such brutal arm-twisting of local communist
leaderships? On [national TV station] France 3 we saw a communist elector say
he was voting for the alliance with the socialists ‘under compulsion and duress’!
“All
that merely, as the press says, to save the senator’s seat that he has been
occupying since the departure of Senator [former PCF senator Nicole] Cohen-Seat?[i] A
lot of people around me couldn’t believe it. There must be another factor.
Maybe a psychological one? A pressure which, for the moment, we don’t know
about.
However,
for Mélenchon the important issue was not to reflect on Laurent’s psychology,
but to grasp the political ramifications of the PS-PCF deal.
“For
the moments the goal of the ‘Solferians’ has been achieved. In Paris, disarray
is total. Among the communists, hundreds of members are demoralised. But our
people have also taken a big hit. Campaigning without the communists was really
not what they wanted. But that the communists will be forced to campaign
against them, that’s really depressing…
“At
a national level the leaks in the commanding vessel can be seen from afar. The
general staff has been decapitated: how can you hold campaign coordinating
meetings with people who are active on opposing tickets? Moreover, our public
message gets distorted: all our interviews are taken up with explanations
concerning ‘the end of the Left Front’, demanded with gluttonous jubilation.
And what is certain is that this is just a foretaste of what awaits us in the
local elections.”
The Paris agreement
The
strength of the shock to PCF ranks is reflected in this resignation letter of
Maeva Nicotra, the branch secretary in the 15th arrondissement, after the Paris decision in favour of joining PS
lists.
“I am a
revolutionary Left Front militant, committed to implementing [ìts program] Above All, the Human and to the
Sixth Republic.
“Given such
irreconcilable differences, there is no way I can continue to lead the branch.
“I
can’t on the one hand condemn the PS’s machinations and on the other support it
in its campaign, even at the municipal level.
“If
I had wanted to be a social democrat I would have directly joined the PS.
“I respect the
decision of the majority, but cannot in any case renounce my ideals.”
Part of the reaction
of the Paris PCF leadership to this sort of response has been to insist that
the PS’s Paris administration has not been applying austerity.
In
an October 21 interview in Líberation,
Ian Brossat, PCF lead candidate for Paris, said: “The policy carried out in
Paris is not one of austerity. The level of public investment has more than
doubled since 2001. The policy carried out in Paris is not that implemented by
the government. That’s why the majority of communists have judged that convergence
is possible in the capital but not nationally.”
The
programmatic agreement for the 163-seat central Paris council assigns the PCF
13 councillors in electable positions (up from eight) and as well as 32
councillors in electable positions in the city’s 20 arrondissement councils (364 seats in all).
The
agreement commits the two parties to:
- Increase the rate of social housing construction so that by 2030 30% of all
housing is social housing (proposal of PCF—the present level is 17.4%);
- Create 5000 new childcare places;
- Create
a network of direct food distribution allowing cheaper prices to consumers and
higher returns to producers (proposal of PCF);
- Guarantee a minimum supply of free water per household (proposal of PCF);
- Develop community health centres, especially in the poorer suburbs and oppose
the closure of the emergency department at the Hôtel Dieu, Paris’s oldest
hospital;
- Improve cleaning services and keep those that are still public in council
hands;
- Follow the example of the PCF-run council in Seine-St Denis in providing
extended support services to domestic violence victims and their children, as
well as boosting education around the extent of violence suffered by women;
- Create mechanisms for greater social participation, including a participatory
budget structure;
- Reject “all austerity policy” and refuse to accept financial arrangements with
the state that would prejudice the ability of the council to carry out the
undertakings on which it was elected.
- End the freeze on hiring of council staff (proposal of PCF).
In
an October 14 opinion piece on the Mediapart
web site (“A Cheap Agreement with a Heavy Political Price”), Alexis Corbière
commented that the 30% social housing target was nothing more than that
stipulated by law and one whose implementation was impossible to guarantee,
given the distant target date. In addition, the PCF-PS deal contained no
commitment to return privatised cleaning services to council ownership, its
childcare places target fell well short of need and it had abandoned the Left
Front demand for the €1.6 billion owed to Paris by the state for services
provided be paid.
As
for the undertaking of “no austerity in Paris”, how could that be guaranteed
when seven PS Paris councillors were also MPs who had voted for the €75 billion
austerity package of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault? “Can they oppose, in the
Town Hall, the measures they support in the Borbon Palace [seat of the National
Assembly]?”
On
October 24, seven Left Front affiliates announced the main points of the
front’s Paris campaign, led by Danielle Simonnet. If focusses on rent controls
and prohibition of evictions, requisitioning of unoccupied housing, priority to
social housing, re-establishing council ownership of privatised services,
increased extracurricular activity for school children, as well as reforms to
the health system, an extensive program of housing insulation and free public
transport—all to be financed by greater use of taxes on capital.
Their
statement said: “Paris is a rich city (with a budget of more than €7 billion)
which has the means of financing an ambitious solidarity-based anti-crisis
program, at the local and metropolitan level.”
The
statement ended: “We want to make Paris the capital of resistance to austerity,
of struggle against real-estate speculation, of eradication of casual work, of
promotion of new forms of solidarity, of implementation of real equality of
rights, of an ambitious collective urban development process, of international
cooperation with the South, and of a democracy that serves citizen
participation and allows Parisians to take back their town!”
PCF differences elsewhere
The
internal PCF discussion has also been sharp outside Paris, such as the
department of Hérault and its capital, Montpellier. In the October 16 edition
of L’Hérault du jour, PCF
departmental secretary Michel Passet criticised the party’s Montpellier branch
for voting to support a Left Front ticket when “in Montepellier there are
things that need changing, but the town is on the left and that’s where it
should stay. It would be terrible if elected communist representatives didn’t
take part in the new majority.”
Two
days later the secretary of the Montpellier PCF branch, Claude Avenante,
replied: “Why the rush to be on a PS ticket at any price, run by [PS mayoral
candidate] J-P Moure, whose proposals are still unknown but whose political
practices and neoliberal orientations can be measured?”
He
added: “Today we are engaged in a process of jointly evolving an alternative
project for Montpellier that will be up to meeting the social needs,
expectations of democracy and environmental requirements of the people of our
town. We do not look for convergence around the Left Front, but look for a
convergence of the majority, with the Left Front as the tool that we communists
have chosen to bring that about…”
A
similar contest broke out in the Brittany department of Finistère when
departmental secretary Eric de Bour came out in support of an alliance with the
PS from the first round, provoking the circulation in the PCF’s Brittany region
of a pro-Left Front petition, “For a Clear Left Alternative”.
Repercussions in the far left
These
struggles are also beginning to affect France’s far-left forces, particularly
the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), whose predecessor, the Revolutionary
Communist League (LCR) promoted “100% Left” tickets in the 2008 municipal poll
and achieved results like 15.3% in Clermont-Ferrand, 7.5% in Nancy, 7% in
Limoges and 6.5% in St Denis.
To
date the NPA has yet to announce a general approach to the 2014 municipal poll,
but has already taken several local initiatives, including the creation of a
ticket with the Left Party in Évry. Évry is the base of Manuel Valls. The PCF
in Evry voted not to maintain its alliance with the PS but is critical of the
NPA-Left Party ticket and is proposing a Left Front ticket.
In
St. Denis the NPA is promoting a far left “mobilisation” ticket against the
PCF-Left Front list.
In
Arles, the NPA has joined the Left Party and other Left Front affiliates in
supporting an opposition ticket to the incumbent PCF mayor. According to
Christian Schwab, member of the Left Front affiliate Anti-Capitalist Left, “The
orientation of the municipality is not what you would expect from the Left
Front, there’s no break from what the PS could do.”
In
the Channel port city of Dieppe, the PCF mayor could face a PG and Greens
challenge over the issue of the transition to sustainable energy..
Some underlying issues
Above
and beyond the heated debate of motives revealed by the PCF’s Paris decision
lie important differences on the key issue—how to broaden the Left Front’s base
of support, specifically which sections of a potential broader social base to
focus on winning. Disappointed PS members and voters? The less “political”
disillusioned masses being tempted by the FN? Young people, especially the
unemployed?
The
prevailing approach within the PCF is to try to build anti-austerity and
anti-right majorities that are as broad as possible, involving, wherever
possible, parts of the PS, especially its official left tendencies. The call is
on these currents and the PS membership and sympathisers to drag the Hollande
and Ayrault government away from austerity policies.
Supporters
of this approach often find Mélenchon’s tone towards the PS too abrasive. On
October 28, author and PCF local councilor Antoine Blocier wrote on his blog: “His
main argument revolves around the idea that Hollande’s policies are disastrous
and must be fought at all levels and that Hollande must ‘be punished’ (his
words).
“Obviously,
I share his point of view on the policies being carried out at the moment and
the cruel disappointments they bring. But I find this business of ‘punishing’ too
strong a coffee for me.
“Who
indeed would be ‘punished’ if the elected representatives of the Left Front
(and in particular the communists, whose competence is recognised in the
municipalities), were absent from local councils? Not François Hollande, not
the employers, but the people living in the towns…”
Blocier
then asks: “Do we go along with Mélenchon’s injunction or do we decide case by
case?
“If
it’s to play a bit part and have no impact on the real debate, I’m against
agreements with the PS…But, yes, wherever it’s possible for us to have
agreements with the PS and the Greens without selling our soul but on the basis
of clear human values and ambitious social objectives, I am for…
“I
don’t want to demonise PS members as a whole. Some of them are real left citizens.
Some of them are just as angry as we are with the backsliding of the
government. There are mayors who have resigned from the PS. In short, they are
the sort of people we can get somewhere with.”
Among
the comments on Blocier’s piece appeared this note (from Paris PCF member
Christophe Adriani):
“I
agree on the basic point, even if I didn’t make that decision [in the Paris
vote] because I didn’t find it relevant. The [Paris] majority decision breaks
the momentum of the Left Front not because one should never ally with the PS nor
ever govern with them, but because accords between chiefs-of-staffs (even with
‘steps forward’) rob us of a Left Front campaign—participative, inventive
(you’ll remember ‘the order is--there are no orders’), broadening the base of
the movement by bringing together not just organisations but citizens …
“Your
arguments are above all valid to justify technical mergers in the second round,
to move towards taking part in executive (yes, let’s be useful), but after
having campaigned for a project as a whole, for a political alternative.”
In
an “Open Letter to the Communists of Paris and Elsewhere” on the Mediapart web site PCF member
Jean-Jacques Barey made a similar point before the Paris vote: “If we stand
broad Left Front tickets in all the arrondissements
on the basis of our analysis and program and we run a an aggressive,
popular and dynamic campaign (something, pardon the reminder, that will not be
the case in the event of a joint first round list with the PS), we will
confront the question of a merged ticket in the second round with a
strengthened balance of forces. And if we get over the 10% threshold, a
realistic goal, we’ll achieve very good negotiating conditions for obtaining a
lot more elected positions.”
Underlying
such positions is the sense that the Left Front can’t advance much without
helping build a popular fight back against the demoralising impact of the PS
government, and that its election campaigns and tone have to aggressively
promote that. That is what Mélenchon embodies, including for thousands of PCF
members. In the words of Corbière: “What Hollande is doing weighs upon people’s
morale. His message has ideological consequences: he disorients people and the
first result is abstention. To be understood you need strong voices.”
In
the October 25 L’Humanité PCF
executive committee members Isabelle Lorand and Frédérick Genevée published a
“Letter to Jean-Luc Mélenchon” that, while regretting the decision of the Paris
PCF majority, sought to bring out underlying issues.
“If
what bring us together is stronger than our differences, it remains the case
that we have differences. Some are trivial. Others are more serious. We see
two—over convergence and centralism. In an interview with Inrocks you show that
your intellectual point of departure is a choice that’s thought-out, tenable
and one for which you take responsibility: ‘What interests me is the most
determined fraction of our people, that part that is ready to mobilise to
construct an alternative. I build on what keeps going.’ And you add: ‘I believe
conflict creates consciousness’.
“The
least that can be said is that your point of view is coherent. But you can’t be
unaware that another point of view, sustained for a long time by the PCF,
exists inside the genuine left. The majority of the people of the left must be
brought together. Rather than divide, it is necessary to seek out the highest
levels of convergence, in order to struggle and win together.”
The
PCF leaders continue: “As for centralism, it will be at the heart of our future
debates. From the autonomy of parliamentarians to that of campaign and policy
areas we don’t have the same approach. We communists broke with democratic centralism
in 1994. That wasn’t so it can be revived in the Left Front …”
The
writers end with an expression of support for Laurent and an appeal to
Mélenchon to stop flirting with the idea of a rejigged Left Front including the
Greens and the NPA.
“Like
so many others, we don’t want that because it would be a feeble Left Front
without a future. What would France be without the Left Front? Deadly thought!
Of course, the Left Front is going through a turbulent patch and some put that
to good use: the Left Front will be dead, and Mélenchon and Laurent with it. We
must put an end to these speculations.
“The
astounding election campaign that you led produced a dynamic that overcame our
differences. It did not erase them…Let’s never lose sight of the essential,
let’s carry out the debate fraternally so that the Left Front lives.”
What phase?
What
can be realistically expected for the Left Front in the present phase of French
politics? Mélenchon has set the organisation the task of getting a higher vote
than the PS in the 2014 European elections, but is that really feasible? It
seems clear that such a perspective cannot be met unless there are favourable
changes on the ground of social struggle and boosted support for the Left Front
arising from that.
In
an October 17 note on his blog, Christian Picquet, spokeperson for Left Front
founding affiliate the Uniting Left, explained that the rise of the FN was an
inevitable phase among “the weakest and most disoriented sectors of the popular
classes”.
“That’s
doubtless what explains why the Left Front, while henceforth a point of
reference on the political chessboard, has not been able to expand the
influence acquired at the last presidential poll … We are therefore prey neither
to a crisis of dissolution that some interested parties proclaim, nor to a
growth crisis that a bit of agility would allow us to overcome.”
For
Picquet, the Left Front has now to focus, on the basis of “that unity which is
our greatest achievement”, on showing the mass of people that even partial
victories against austerity are possible and helping prepare them.
“For
the popular sectors to overcome their lethargy and or a devastating feeling of
powerlessness, it is critical that hope returns and a perspective is reopened of
victories, be they partial in the immediate term. The present weakness of
mobilisations, as revealed in the battle over retirement and pensions, is
basically explained by the feeling of wage earners and citizens that they don’t
have the means to turn the situation to their advantage.”
Whether
the Left Front, after the turmoil of the last period, is in condition to
provide the inspiration, organisation and leadership necessary to turn the tide
will become clearer in coming months.
Jean-Luc
Mélenchon, on the basis of the trend to majority PCF vote for Left Front
tickets, is lately more hopeful: “I am not afraid of seeing communists in the
streets distributing leaflets alongside Paris socialist MPs who voted for the
National Interprofesional Agreement[ii],
retirement at 66 and all the rest. It will not happen. Never. No way. Hidalgo
has bought the wind! The communists are in the resistance. They are massively
and fundamentally Left Front and not Huists[iii].
“As
for us, let’s be patient. The split in the PS and the Greens is inevitable,
just like the decomposition of the official left… But hold firm, because none
of that will happen if we do not advance down our chosen road.”
[i] In France senators are elected indirectly, by a combination of local and
regional councilors and deputies (150,000 electors in all). The more local
councillors a party wins, the greater its chance of having senators elected.
[ii] The National
Interprofesional Agreement (ANI) is the Ayrault government’s “labour market
reform”, negotiated between the main employer confederation (MEDEF) and some of
the French union confederations.
[iii] Huists,
followers of former PCF national secretary Robert Hue, who came to believe that
the class struggle had ceased to exist.
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