Elections leave a murky picture THE SOCIALIST Party leadership succeeded in
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This are the elements of a left policy that can mobilize, of a government that can fight the crisis. Mitterrand and Rocard are doing the opposite! Let us fight
FRANCE try's second largest city, that would make it far more of a threat than winning a large protest vote in presidential election or getting a few dozen deputies in the national assembly.
In this respect, although the immediate results of traditional right's pact with the NF were thin gruel for both, the neofascists gained a new legitimacy in the Marseilles area in particular that could prove very dangerous. Moreover, the NF's setback could have paradoxical effects. It could deprive the SP to some extent of a bogieman for rallying the left and liberal vote. It could increase the NF's appeal to popular layers who feel cheated by the electoral game.
To a large extent, in fact the decline in the NF's national vote can be attributed to undemocratic changes in the election system. With nearly 9% of the national vote, the NF got only one deputy. Under the first-past-the-post system reintroduced by the traditional right majority elected in 1986, the smaller parties have little chance of getting representation commensurate with their actual percentage of the vote. So, French TV viewers have been treated to the rare sight of a neo-fascist strongman not denouncing democracy but protesting against the lack of it.
Socialist deals with centre-right
Moreover, the layers of the population who feel unrepresented by the present system will almost certainly grow. None of the basic problems raised by the capitalist crisis were settled by the elections. And the center of the political stage is now being occupied by parliamentary maneuvers carried out in sovereign disregard of the voters. Even the traditional right is raising a hue and cry over the dealing by elements of the UDF with the SP government, which they can rightly claim was not at all sanctioned by the voters. In fact, some pollsters point to a sharp drop already in the popularity of SP government, although it has not yet had time to do anything.
Decline in CP's vote reversed
During the campaign itself, the bourgeois center righteously spurned the SP's advances. And the elections themselves showed that the centrists who ran on the SP's presidential majority slate were rejected by their past supporters, although in a number of cases they got a good vote
The Socialist Party itself got a sharp warning from left voters. The Communist Party centered its campaign against the "opening," against alliances with bourgeois politicians. That clearly paid off. First the first time in a decade, the decline in the CP vote was reversed. In the first round, it rose to 11.3%, in comparison with the 6.8% that the party got in the presidential election and the 9.8% that it got in the 1986 legislative elections. On the other hand, the CP vote must now be less certain than in the past, since a lot of these voters are not committed to the party and cannot be counted on to go along with opportunist or sectarian turns.
In the first round of the presidential elections, for example, the far left candidates got a total of around 4.5% of the vote. That is equivalent to more than 40% of the CP's vote in the second round, and it seems certain that most of the far-left vote went to the CP. But, of course, that by itself does not explain the party's success. The apparatus of the CP has remained largely intact, despite the decline in the party's popularity, and it weighed heavily in the election of deputies in areas where the CP is rooted in local government. This also explains why the Communists suffered less from a system skewed against minorities than the NF.
The importance of the CP's local bases was indicated by the fact that 12, or around half of the CP's deputies are now also mayors. Of the previous CP parliamentary group of 32, only five were mayors. In the areas where the CP vote went up by more than 20% in comparison with the presidential elections, a number of CP deputies were elected, of whom seven were mayors. This makes the upcoming municipal elections even more crucial for the CP. And in a number of these areas, the far-left forces assembled around the Juquin campaign in the first round of the presidential elections got substantial votes.
To a considerable extent, the relative success of the Communist Party has deprived the SP of an alibi for concessions to the right. The CP deputies give the working class parties a majority in the assembly. The fact that the CP holds the margin of victory can put considerable pressure on the Socialist Party apparatus at lower levels, who can be expected to have a hard time explaining it to their base if the SP parliamentary leadership fails to bloc with the CP to pass pro-labor legislation.
Growing political and social instability
If the SP follows too right wing a line, it
For an SP/CP government! THE FACTORY bulletins of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, French section of the Fourth International, published a common editorial on the election results. The following are excerpts:
Since 1983 and 1984 all the elections have given the same signals - massive abstentions on the left, disillusionment and disgust, a rise of the National Front in the context of a worsening crisis and declining credibility of the parties. Chirac profited from this to retake the government in 1986 and deal still harder blows to wage earners, young people and the Kanaks. Two years later, he has bitten the dust! But in the legislative elections, the right-wing minority has nonetheless managed to save its face because the SP keeps bowing to it.
This has to end! The voters have clearly chosen a new Socialist and Communist majority. They have rebuffed the president's centrist cronies. So much the better. The left cannot be remobilized with such people. And that is what the situation demands. There is a political solution - an SP and CP government that meets the main demands of the people.
To the Socialists, we say, stop demobilizing our camp by overtures to the right. To the Communists, we say stop your zigzags and divisive maneuvers. On the basis of the unity of the workers and their organizations, we must demand the following urgent measures: a 6,000 franc minimum wage for all, including the unemployed; a 35-hour workweek; an end to militarism and French nuclear weapons; real equality between men and women; an end to the expulsions of immigrant workers and granting their right to vote; independence for together to win our demands. * International Viewpoint #144 • June 27, 1988 risks seeing its rivals regain a lot of the ground it has won from them since 1981. On the other hand, there will certainly be strong pressures on the CP to take a united-front approach, because of the support for working-class unity shown in the
Furthermore, the elections have shown that far-left sentiment is already strong enough, if properly focused, to exercise a real pressure on the big workers parties. This potential has been recognized even by the Socialist Party, which ran a number of candidates with far left backgrounds (some of whom were elected) and offered places on its slate to the Juquin committees (which were rejected).
So overall the elections point to a new period of growing political and social instability, with both greater dangers and greater opportunities for the workers' movement. The hold of the reformist leaderships on the working class seems to have weakened. But political and trade-union alternatives have to be built to keep the resistance of workers and oppressed groups from being scattered and to counter disillu-
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