Pierre Juquin to
FRANCE unemployexcluding people and on ment, and his support for votes for immigrants have already breathed some fresh air into the electoral battle.
Nonetheless, a debate is now opening stand for president up. At stake is defining the content of
Juquin's campaign so that it will respond best to the great problems of the day, so that it will develop a real left
MORE AND MORE, political life in France is becoming dominated by the prospect of the presidential elections to be held in May 1987. The stakes are very high. As long as the government is divided between a social-democratic president and a rightist cabinet and parliamentary majority, the bosses are blocked from launching the major offensive against the working people that their interests demand.
In this context, the development of the rénovateurs
(renewal) current led by Pierre Juquin in opposition to the zig-zags of the CP leadership revived hopes for the emergence of a major left alternative. Juquin's announcement on October 12 that he was running for president and sought to unite a broad-based left alternative behind him was therefore a big development on the left.
At its May congress, the Ligue Communiste
Révolutionnaire (LCR, French section of the Fourth
International) voted to support Juquin if he decided to stand as an independent candidate on a class-struggle basis
(see /V 122, June 15, 1987). The following comment on
Juquin's announcement was published in the October 15 issue of Rouge, the paper of the LCR.
CHRISTIAN PICQUET
T'S DONE. The possibility of a
Pierre Juquin running for the presidency has become a reality.
The candidacy of the Communist Party's former spokesperson is the only thing new in this election campaign, which has been developing against the backdrop of cohabitation and is already getting bogged down in scandals, in quarrels that have nothing to do with the concerns of the mass of people.
Juquin's entry into the race marks the of a process that has led culmination several thousand critical Communist
Party members to oppose the two apparatuses [the CP and SP] dominating the workers' movement, and to try to rally all those who do not go along with either the capitulations of the social democrats or the sectarianism and impotence of the CP leadership.
In recent months, this process has accelerated, owing largely to a revival of mass mobilizations and to the new demands that were expressed in particular by the great mobilizations last winter la massive student revolt and a mili-
28 favorable precondition for the emertant railway strike]. It represents a
International Viewpoint • October 26, 1987 gence of a new revolutionary force.
Pierre Juquin's declaration and his statements to the press show a number of convergences with our own course of action. Without denying his adherence to the communist current, he is seeking to promote a convergence of forces and activists coming from various origins, and to offer a perspective for social change to those hundreds of thousands of workers whose hopes were dashed by the experience of the left in power. He has demonstrated his determination to do everything possible to defeat reaction in the second round of the presidential elections.
Essential role of the mass movement
At the same time, Juquin stresses the essential role of the mass movement, whose most recent expressions "have helped to open up the roads to unity, to democratic control, and a policy that would reconcile word and deed." His defence of such basic aspirations as equality, rejection of a society based alternative to the SP and CP, so that it will open the way for the greatest possible number of activists and workers to identify with the campaign and associate themselves with it...
The anti-capitalist campaign we have in mind is not one that would take up the entire revolutionary program or would yield to the temptation to produce an all-inclusive catalogue of demands. But it must reflect the demands placed on the agenda by struggles. It must set in motion a unity dynamic that could make it possible to oust the right from government. It must express a firm determination to avoid a repetition of the disillusions created by the Union of the Left.
Points need to be clarified
In this respect, Pierre Juquin's statement, which did not amount to platform, raised points that should be clarified in order to give his campaign a well-defined identity of its own. It will be necessary to clarify the critique of the orientations of the CP and SP and the assessment of their activity from 1981 to 1986 [when both parties were in the Union of the Left government]....
This necessary clarification is not a problem solely for Pierre Juquin and those organizations ready to support him. It concerns all those who want a united campaign, who see a historic opportunity to revive hope on the left. In this regard, we fully share the preoccupation Pierre Juquin expressed when he called for the formation of "open, pluralist" support committees that would "provide opportunities for all to express themselves and take account of all opinions."...
Since last May, we have been supporting Alain Krivine's candidacy for president and collecting signatures for him. At the same time, from the beginning, we have sought to assemble the conditions for a unity candidate coming from the Communist rénovateurs current, since such a candidacy seemed the most desirable way of gaining the maximum impact for an anti-capitalist campaign.
The LCR will now determine its position on the latest political developments in a form that will permit the broadest possible discussion among the party's members. *