A political earthquake (International Viewpoint 27.4.02)

Francois Duval

The results of the first round of the French presidential election have
provoked a real trauma, particularly among popular layers and traditional
left supporters. The constitutional rules for this election mean that only
the two candidates who top the poll go through to the second round. This
means that the final election will be a run off between Jacques Chirac, the
outgoing president a particularly corrupt rightwing president and
Jean-Marie Le Pen, representative of the racist and fascist far right.
Lionel Jospin, the outgoing prime minister and Socialist Party candidate
got a few hundred thousand votes less than Le Pen. He is thus eliminated
from the second round.

Bankruptcy of the liberal left 

This unexpected situation should not hide some other lessons of the 21st
April election. First of all, a high rate of abstention (27.85%), the
highest since the introduction of the direct elections for the president.
Then the collapse of the Communist Party, which has been in the government
led by Jospin for the last 5 years: it got just 3.7% of the vote. A
historic phenomenon: it was overtaken by two revolutionary far left
candidates. Arlette Laguiller for Lutte Ouvrière got 5.72% of the vote and
Olivier Besancenot, candidate of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire
(LCR-French section of the Fourth International) got 4.3%, that is 1.2
million votes. 

Popular abstentionism, like the collapse of the parties which had been in
government (with the notable exception of the Greens who succeeded in
bringing out their differences with social-democracy) bear witness to a
widespread phenomenon. There is a clear rejection of the policies of
austerity and social injustice that have been implemented over the last few
years and the parties that implemented them are discredited. Several
opinion polls published during the campaign showed that three quarters of
the electorate had difficulty in telling the difference between the
political programmes of Chirac and Jospin. The European Summit in Barcelona
a few weeks before the election only deepened this inability to tell the
difference. There Chirac and Jospin, in duo, accepted the privatisation of
the Electricité de France (a state company which still has the monopoly on
the supply of electricity), pushing back the retirement age by five years,
and a commitment to reduce the public deficit which means budgetary
austerity in the years to come.

This confusion, which was already very strong on social and economic
questions, worsened with the eruption into the election campaign of the
"law and order" or "insecurity" question. Chirac made it his central theme
in order to highlight his difference with the right, supposedly more
"laxist", at least so he thought. Because most of the candidates, right and
left, rushed onto this slippery slope. Chevènement was not slow to up the
stakes, But very rapidly Jospin followed him. In fact during the campaign
only Noel Mamère, the Greens' candidate, and above all Olivier Besancenot,
refused to give in to this pressure and to abandon the defence of
democratic freedoms or to criminalise young people. What was the result? A
huge wave of law and order demagogy under the slogan "zero tolerance",
young people from the underprivileged suburbs and in particular young
people of immigrant descent being implicitly or explicitly held
responsible. A further outcome was that Le Pen whose linking of law and
order to immigration has been his stock in trade for thirty years only had
to pick up the winnings. 

The elimination of the parliamentary left from the second round of the
presidential election, like the strengthening of the racist far right, are
obviously a defeat for the French workers` movement. They will obviously
encourage wide-spread soul-searching and a discussion on future perspective
for the whole left: the parliamentary left parties, trade unions,
associations but also the radical left, How did we get here? How can we
prepare the fightback, on a political and social level? How can we regain
ground?

The fabulous campaign of Olivier Besancenot 

These elections also showed that faced with failure of the free-market
left, another left exists, not only in the social movements but also in the
electoral arena. Amd that is the starting point for rebuilding. This
presidential election also showed that, in terms of political
organisations, the radical left, the non-free-market left, the left that
defends the interests of workers and different layers of oppressed in
society, is mainly two organisations, Lutte Ouvrière and the LCR. From the
beginning the LCR was conscious of this situation and the responsibilities
of activists who identify with a revolutionary perspective. This is why the
LCR proposed to Lutte Ouvrière a political agreement for joint candidates
in the presidential and parliamentary elections, in order to give the
strongest possible expression to popular layers breaking with the
governmental left. Naturally this not a question of denying the major
differences that exist between the LCR and LO but to make it possible for
them to be expressed in in a common framework which would not harm the
political struggle on some major questions which are common to the
revolutionary left organisations and which clearly differentiate them from
the free-market left. This had been achieved in the European elections of
1999 where a joint LO-LCR list made possible the election of five
revolutionary MEPs. Conscious of the popularity of Arlette Laguiller, the
traditional candidate of Lutte Ouvrière, the LCR proposed that Arlette be
the joint candidate. Lutte Ouvrière having refused this proposal and made a
sectarian choice without even agreeing to a discussion, a national
conference of the LCR, in June 2001, decided to present one of its own
leaders, Olivier Besancenot a 27-year old postal worker, and trade-union
and global justice activist. The goal was to have a candidate who would put
forward an action programme of urgent demands against the bosses' offensive
which is extended by "pluralist left" government and the European Union.
But also a candidate who, like the members of the LCR, is a real activist
of the mobilisations and demonstrations against capitalist globalisation,
unlike Lutte Ouvrière. For this organisation these demonstrations are
simply diversion from the "real" anti-capitalist struggle. A candidate who,
lastly, would bring to the centre of the political stage the struggle
against all forms of exploitation of oppression and of discrimination
created and strengthened by capitalism, particularly of young people, women
and immigrants. Another goal was to propose the building of a new
anti-capitalist party, to bring together not only revolutionaries but all
those who reject the barbarity of capitalism, socialist communists or
ecologists who no longer who identify with the governmental left and above
all the tens of thousands of activists from the trade-unions and
associations who today no longer have any party political reference point,
after the collapse of the Communist Party and the betrayals of the
Socialist Party. 

Our goal in choosing Olivier Besancenot was also to bring a new element
into political life, by making it possible for millions of people to vote
at last for someone who is not a professional politician, but for someone
like themselves, a wage worker who has the same pay slip as they do, who,
once the elections were over, would find himself like them^Åat work. It was
also a question of speaking to young people, presenting somebody unknown
but in step with their struggles, whether the mobilisations against
capitalist globalisation or against casualised labour which are growing in
France today in big retail firms such as the FNAC book and record shop
chain or MacDonald's. This wager was in large part successful. It was among
the youngest electors that Olivier got his best scores (13.9% of 18-24 year
olds, and 6.3% of 25-34 year olds according to certain breakdowns). This
campaign, waged under the slogan "Our lives are worth more than their
profits" enabled the LCR to speak to a far wider audience than usual. In a
few months of campaigning the European members of parliament, Alain Krivine
and Roseline Vacchetta, and above all Olivier Besancenot spoke at a hundred
public meetings attended by more than 25,000 people, mostly workers and
young people. We had not seen this for more than thirty years! In the last
three weeks, after the 500 sponsorships were deposited and Olivier was at
last invited by the major television channels, this unknown candidate made
a breakthrough. The numbers attending meetings reached record levels,
hundreds of messages of support and encouragement and asking to join the
LCR were received every day. This increased after the results of the first
round were announced. 

The electoral success has obviously changed the LCR's relationship with the
workers' movement, the social movements and with the other organisations on
the left and far left. First effect: LO has agreed to meet the LCR to
discuss the possibility of an electoral agreement for the parliamentary
elections in June. It is too early to know if the outconme will be
positive. But the mere fact that there will be such a meeting shows that
something has changed on the far left.

Building a leftwing of the left 

The current situation, shaped by the crisis of the official left, the
threat of the far right and the rise of the far left, confers new
responsibilities on revolutionaries. First of all we must be the spearhead
of the mobilisation against the far right, which has been growing notably
among young people since the 21st April. The LCR has been very present in
these demonstrations. Then we have to prepare the conditions for a massive
response to the offensive which is in preparation, whoever is going to
constitute the next parliamentary majority, against social security, public
services and democratic rights, particularly for immigrants. Then we must
develop a perspective for emerging from this unprecedented crisis, a
perspective which gives a new hope to a traumatised workers' movement.
Moving towards a new party capable of responding, refounding a fighting
left, rehabilitating the project of revolutionary transformation of
society, will not be easy to do. The result of the far left in general and
the LCR's candidate in particular do not in themselves resolve this
problem. But it makes the conditions a lot more favourable than in the
past. This is the task the LCR sets itself in the period to come.