10.04.2002

Workers' challenge

A candidate describing herself as a "revolutionary communist" is currently registering around nine percent in the opinion polls less than two weeks before the first round of the presidential elections in France. Arlette Laguiller, who is standing for the Trotskyist Lutte Ouvrière (Workers' Struggle) grouping on April 21, is currently embarked on a speaking tour, addressing rallies in just about every town and city and pulling in hundreds every night. Several thousands filled La Mutualité in Paris on March 17 and as many as 30,000 in 50 localities will have heard her speak by the time France goes to the polls. To coincide with her campaign Lutte Ouvrière has published a new book by comrade Laguiller entitled Mon communisme (my communism), which is being snapped up by the score in every part of France. She has run for president in every election since 1974, but never before has she made such an impression in the polls. The principal reason for this is not hard to understand. It lies in the fact that the 'official' Communist Party, the Parti Communiste Franà§ais, has since 1997 been part of the governing, Socialist Party-led coalition, which also includes the greens. Prime minister Lionel Jospin has headed an administration which is only marginally to the left of Tony Blair's, yet the 38 PCF deputies have never once voted against it. Occasionally they have abstained (when the success of a particular measure has been assured by the support of the right), but usually they have backed whatever proposal Jospin has put forward. Pride of place in the deeds of the 'pluralist left' government has been the introduction of the 35-hour week. But the 'Aubry law' also imposes greater 'flexibility' and the 'annualisation' of working hours, and comes with a package of cuts, redundancies and privatisation. The recent moves to part-privatise Air France, for example, have been fronted by the PCF transport minister. The two main candidates for April 21 are Jospin himself and Gaullist Jacques Chirac, the current president, who is running for re-election. The fact that in recent decades the president and prime minister have frequently come from opposing parties derives from the differing terms of office - five years for national assembly members and seven for the president. The successful referendum in 2000, reducing the president's term to five years, was driven by the idea that holding both elections in the same year would be more likely to produce a president in tune with the prime minister. However, an opinion poll last month found that a massive 74% of those asked thought that the policies of Jospin and Chirac were so similar that the candidates were regarded as bonnet blanc et blanc bonnet. They vie with each other to appear tougher on crime and firmer in their refusal to extend citizenship rights to immigrants - the millions of sans papiers. The result of PCF complicity in the increasingly rightwing consensus has been the decimation of the party's support. In the immediate post-war years its vote exceeded 30% and as recently as the 70s it could pull in more than 20%. But now support for the PCF presidential candidate, Robert Hue, is languishing at around five percent. The electoral system allows coalition partners to stand their own separate presidential candidates, who then traditionally ask their supporters to switch after they are defeated in the first round. Out of the 16 who have made the ballot paper, only the top two will go through to the second round on May 5 - and these will undoubtedly be Jospin and Chirac, who are currently running neck and neck. So the PCF will faithfully deliver its voters to Jospin and expect to be rewarded with ministerial posts in a reshuffled government. Clearly though, both the PCF and Parti Socialiste are perturbed by the size of comrade Laguiller's support. For the PCF, to be eclipsed by Lutte Ouvrière will be a humiliation and, rather obviously, will reduce its bargaining power with Jospin. However, what alarms Jospin himself is Arlette's insistence that she would neither offer any second-round preference nor participate in a government "defending the interests of the propertied classes and sacrificing those of the workers" (Lutte Ouvrière February 1). She will not play the "politics of the lesser evil" (February 8). If something approaching 10% of the electorate followed comrade Laguiller's advice and abstained on May 5, that would surely hand the election to Chirac on a plate. No wonder both Jospin and Hue have been obliged to pose left in their separate ways and have been delivering schoolmasterly lectures. According to Hue, "I can be in the government and not agree with certain of its choices." It was all very well to shout from the sidelines, but "that is the equivalent of saying nothing can be done. In that case - and I'm thinking of Arlette Laguiller here - you are inviting the French people to noisy protest and revolt, but refusing any engagement, any taking of responsibility, before the fall of the system." While the ex-Trotskyist Jospin now claims to be the "candidate of social progress", concerned for the poor and excluded, Hue states that the election is a chance to pull the government to the left through a big PCF vote. The 'pluralist left' will apparently soon drop all appearances of forming a privatising, service-cutting administration, and instead hit the speculators and tax the rich - if you believe PCF promises. But how is such a change to be enforced? As Lutte Ouvrière comments, "You do not see Robert Hue threatening not to call for a Jospin vote in the second round if he does not, at the very least, agree to take up PCF positions, even if they are derisory" (February 1). The paper has little difficulty in exposing the PCF's despicable role: it "garners votes that Jospin is too discredited to win", then unconditionally offers them to the PS in the second round - all the while disguising its opportunism with talk of 'anchoring' the government to the left through a display of "'daring' it has never shown in the assembly". However, this poses tactical questions for Lutte Ouvrière too. While rightly rejecting the idea of 'choosing the butcher', surely comrade Laguiller could influence the outcome of the second round in a more positive fashion than simply issuing 'a curse on both your houses' statements. The reports of Arlette's rallies carried in Lutte Ouvrière demonstrate that workers all over the country are more than a little doubtful about the wisdom of abstaining on May 5. Many will vote Jospin anyway. The group could give those workers a better lead through a tactic similar to the one it mentions in passing in relation to the PCF - issuing a set of precise, pro-worker demands to Jospin as a condition for the left's support. His refusal to accede would prove conclusively to the waverers that a vote for Jospin is wasted and help draw them away from their traditional parties. In complete contrast to Hue, comrade Laguiller is gaining significant support for an uncompromising, working class platform which does not stop short of calling for revolution and world communism. She is winning over PCF supporters without wrapping herself in the left reformist clothes of the 'old PCF' - a lesson here for the Socialist Alliance and its attitude to old Labour, perhaps. However, the programme of Lutte Ouvrière is not without its weaknesses. To illustrate this let me quote Socialist Worker, whose reporter, Paul McGarr, attended one of comrade Laguiller's rallies. After referring to her remarks on the health service, wages and privatisation, he writes: "Arlette's speech focussed almost entirely on such bread and butter issues, before ending with a call for a transformation of society" (April 6). Comrade McGarr concludes: "The support for Arlette Laguiller shows the potential, but to realise that potential will mean more than winning votes "¦ it means relating struggles on jobs, wages and privatisation to wider social movements and protests - against racism, corporate globalisation, capitalism, and against war. Unfortunately no organisation on the left in France is doing this consistently. The greatest failing in recent months is to have failed to seriously build an anti-war movement." Let us be clear what is being said: an SWP comrade is criticising Lutte Ouvrière for "¦ economism. And despite the SWP's own shortcomings in this area and comrade McGarr's deficient formulations, he is certainly correct. Lutte Ouvrière makes Socialist Worker appear like a paragon of consistent democracy by contrast. It contains page after page of reports featuring trade-union-type demands - better wages, no sackings, defend pensions, decent healthcare, cleaner working environment - all essential demands, but none of them politically challenging the current order. It is true that Arlette puts forward the idea of recallable representatives (TV journalist Serge July ludicrously suggested that this was a recipe for "dictatorship" in an interview with her). But Lutte Ouvrière does not appear to have anything to say on the French constitution - not even on the presidency itself, with the monarchical powers it bestows upon one, largely unaccountable, individual. Comrade Laguiller's speeches do indeed follow the same pattern: unemployment, sackings, privatisation, pay, working hours; followed by the call to change the political balance in favour of "the world of labour" and communism by voting for her. The one exception I know of since her first campaign rally in January occurred at the 350-strong meeting in Bastia on February 9: In the debate Corsican nationalists asked her if she supported the demand for independence for Corsica. She confirmed that Lutte Ouvrière was for the right of peoples to determine their lives but she doubted that the majority of the inhabitants of Corsica were for independence. "But if the choice was made after consultation with the whole population of the island she would not find it shocking "¦ [However] in practically every case where separatists have come to power, the bourgeoisie and the bigwigs have enriched themselves on the backs of the people, who have remained poor "¦ "This position was applauded by a large part of the hall, obviously agreed that it was more important to fight to prevent sackings, protect public services and control company accounts" (Lutte Ouvrière February 15). In other words, forget the national question: stick to the 'real' class issues - ie, militant trade unionism. Lutte Ouvrière does not completely ignore international and social issues, but you would hardly know that Bush and Blair are threatening another major assault on Iraq from its pages. Socialist Worker is correct to state that the anti-war movement is of secondary importance for the comrades, who clearly believe that the class struggle is fought almost exclusively in the workplace. Another weakness is exposed by the fact that - excluding the PCF, PS and greens - there are no fewer than three left candidates for president. Comrade Laguiller is opposed by Olivier Besancenot of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire and Daniel Gluckstein of the Parti des Travailleurs (Workers Party). This is all the more disappointing in view of the cooperation of the LCR with Lutte Ouvrière in past general elections - in 1997 they jointly won more than five percent. Unlike the separate candidacies of the PCF and PS - which actually strengthen Jospin's challenge, since he can count on reaching the second round and on gaining the second preferences of militant workers influenced by the PCF - a split left vote will reduce the impact of the working class alternative in the first and only round where it is presented. Despite joint work in the past, the French left remains crippled by the failure to grasp the concept of partyism. The comrades of Lutte Ouvrière are not shy in pointing out the need for a class party, but there is no evidence of a desire to overcome the sect mentality that has left us disunited - the LCR and PT candidacies do not even rate a mention in the pages of Lutte Ouvrière. Nevertheless it is important that Arlette Laguiller attracts the widest possible support. In the words of the same paper, "The more votes she gets, the more the bosses and the politicians in their service will fear the world of labour" (Lutte Ouvrière March 15). Peter Manson