The left after the Election
Alain Krivine, a former leader of the student Sonia Leith asked him about the implications of movement in May 1968. is today at the head of the presidential election for the revolutionary the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR).
International Viewpoint #266 May 1995
France • Jean-Marie Le Pen (National Front) won 15% of votes - his best score ever. Why?
Krivine: He managed to protect his "respectable" image! This let the Front ride on the fall-out of unemployment and marginalisation, deeply felt by a range of layers of society. They also profited from the corruption scandals plaguing the main parties.
The National Front is clearly putting down roots in the "basement" of French society. Le Pen's best scores were in regions with relatively large immigrant populations. Most worrying is the evidence that Le Pen was the most popular candidate among voters representing the "classic" sociological working class..
In short, Le Pen is the result of a crisis to which the left has not provided the answers. • Communist Party Secretary Robert Hue claims the 1.9 point increase in his party's score compared to 1988 is a "major left
The halt in their long term decline is certainly something they are happy about, but one shouldn't exaggerate the importance of the extra votes — mainly protests against the Socialist Party. And the problem is that CP conservatives will now say there is no need for further modernisation, while the 'reformers" will be encouraged to push for more. One real success was the reemergence of a milieu of intellectuals who were again willing to support the Communist Party?. • "Workers' Struggle" candidate Arlette Laguiller got over 5% - and announced her plan to create a "large left party"
She started her campaign with her usual abstract critique of capitalism. Then, when she realised she was having an effect, particularly among former CP voters, she began to propose transitional demands — an Emergency Plan. This is a historic first for Lutte Ouvriere (Workers; Struggle). Some of her proposals were good, some were 'ultra-left', and some of what she said about the state rather vague. But still, she no longer proposes a "Mass event"... One in five vote far right
The National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen and a smaller Catholic fundamentalist movement won over six million votes in the first round, writes Arnaldo Castellera. And a full 46% those who voted Le Pen say they did so on the basis of his programme. This is a higher proportion than among voters for the Communist (34%) Green (26%) or Workers' Struggle candidates (23%). More manual workers' voted for the National Front (FN) than for any other candidate. And for the first time, a significant number of white unemployed voters were attracted to.
It is time to stop characterising the Le Pen phenomenon as a 'protest' vote. It is more. Of course, the roots of Le Pen's popularity are the absence of solutions by the parties which have held power over the last 20 years, by the atmosphere of economic and social crisis, and the wave of political and financial scandals. The 32 increase in the National Front score (since the 1988 election) is most marked in those regions most affected by the economic crisis — Alsace, Lorraine, and the North East. There are no electoral districts where their score is declining significantly.
Municipal elections are coming, and the FN may win control of many of the larger cities. In many more, they will be the strongest right wing party in the new council. And as Le Pen promised on the eve of the Presidential election, "we be there to block the left wing deviations in the Chirac programme".
The author is a member of the broad left anti-fascist movement Ras l'front, which combines anti-fascist activities with pressure on the main left parties to prevent them adopting the right's demagogic stance on immigration and crime.
Revolutionary Party", but a broad party to fight for the exploited
What does this new proposition mean? Maybe nothing - the last issue of their paper didn't repeat Arlette's propositions. Maybe it's a classic Lambertist proposition - ignoring the really-existing political forces, especially the non-revolutionary parts of the alternative left and the ecological movement, and simply proclaiming a broad initiative, which would be nothing more than a sectarian operation based on a Lutte Ouvriere core — a project doomed to failure. But maybe Lutte Ouvriere is really thinking about building a workers' party — which would be very interesting indeed. • Red-Green candidate Michelle Voynet only polled 3.,35 % —surely a failure for the red-green recomposition you have been working for?
Any recomposition was doomed from the moment Voynet was only proposed
Internationa/ Viewpoint #266 May 1995 by the Greens. She tried to catch up later, by stressing the elements in her programme which imply a rupture with the existing liberal consensus - the 35 hour week, solidarity, internationalism and so on — and by accepting the support of a range of alternative left groups. But Green she remained for the public and the media.
And in the end she scored less votes than the Green candidate A. Waechter in 1988.
A part of the (very small French green movement deserted her, and she picked up new support on the alternative left. But not much.
She says she was seen as "too green for the Reds, and too red for the Greens"
• What now?
The Revolutionary Communist
League (LCR) calls for a vote against Chirac in the second round. But we have no illusions in Jospin, especially after 14
Socialist Party
No-one expected Leonel Jospin, the last minute choice of candidate, to do was well as he did. His first round score is a clear improvement on the 4.5% Socialist Party vote in the June 1994 European elections But second round support for the Socialists is still an incredible 600,000 votes less than in the 1981 election which swept François Mitterand to power. And in the meantime, 750,000 new voters have registered. Support among teachers and university educated civil servants is still solid, but only 23% of other white collar workers, and 20% of blue collar workers voted for Jospin this time round. The Socialists are paying the heavy invoice of their years in power. Jospin's personal reputation as honest, uncorruptable, and a critic of the excesses of Mitterandism and of the party apparatus enabled him to unite the party - though many had to grit their teeth as they voted.
The Party is now sure to replace its 'business as usual' programme with a more ambitious set of promises. There are votes to be won on a left-leaning programme attacking the 'social fracture everyone is concerned about, but Party bosses seem more concerned about the growing popularity of the National Front, and will doubtless fight for a pro-European Union, moderate programme. In any case, as long as public opinion is split 50-50 between Chirac and the left, Jospin will probably be able to assure total control in the Socialist Party, and marginalise his hard left critics. Trouble is brewing. * by André Terroux
Communist Party years of Socialist
Party management of the country.
The growth in social struggles during the election period shows that more and more workers are fed up with passivity. Over five million voters supported leftwing candidates who criticised the Socialist Party's management of the bourgeoisie's austerity
This is a period of plans.
remobilisation. We need to find the political keys, to avoid the mobilisation falling flat.
That's why we originally called for a left unity candidate to the left of the
Socialist Party. We were unsuccessful, but the current situation is still crying out for such a realignment. If we miss this moment, a whole new generation of militants will be disillusioned, confused, or sucked up by the Socialist Party and the
The 8.7% score (2,631,173 votes) for Robert Hue, General Secretary of the Communist Party represents a halt in the declining support for the party. Otherwise, there is nothing to encourage the faithful. Hue is in third place among manual working class voters (National Front 27%, Socialist Party 20%, Communists 17%), and came second to the far right or the socialists in most of the municipalities with a Communist-led local government.
For the first time, the Party can boast a General Secretary who is more popular with the electorate than with the Communist hierarchy. His fresh, combative style marked out a position to the left of the Socialist Party, while his statements on democratic reform and modernisation reassured the various "renovation' trends in the Party. But neither conservatives nor reformers know which way Hue will try to take the Party now. Towards the end of the campaign the Party daily I'Humanité regurgitated the old slanders (anti-Communist, absent from day-to-day struggles, petty-bourgeois, frivolous) against the Trotskyist candidate Arlette Laguiller. Hardly an sign of the Communist Party's recognition of the new reality — 18% of the electorate voting for anti-capitalist candidates, but only half of them identifying with the Communist Party. * by Georges Villetin
Workers' Struggle (LO) Communists. This is the time to start opening spaces for common action, and building spaces for common reflection.
interviewed in Paris on 25 April by Sonia Leith
1. At least two people died during the campaign - a young Comorian was shot by National Front fly-posters in Marseille, and a Moroccan drowned after being thrown in the Seine during the fascist May Day ("Joan of Arc Day") demonstration in Paris.
2. Including the writers Gilles Pérault and Didier Deaninckx, the cartoonist Siné, the professor Vovelle, and the architect Chémétov
The 1,649,000 votes (5.32%) cast for Lutte Ouvriere (Workers' Struggle) candidate Arlette Laguiller is the highest score yet achieved by a Trotskyist candidate — Laguiller won only 1.99% of votes in the last presidential election. Her highest scores this time were registered in the urban strongholds of the Socialist and Comm-unist Parties. She won over 6% of votes in the depressed Parisian suburbs. As a consequence, we can expect to see militant revolutionaries speaking on television more often. But more importantly, Laguiller raised the possibility of forming a wider, "party of the exploited and excluded. The Revolutionary Communist
League has been proposing such a party for years now, and, if serious, this new step by Workers' Struggle is a very important development. But there is no point in proclaiming a Mass Workers' Party from a position of splendid isolation. Instead we need to test our cooperation in practice, based on an action programme which responds to the immediate needs of the workers. And although tens of thousands of workers would support such a party, no-one will come forward until there are real guarantees of pluralism and democracy.* by Jean-Louis Michel
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