05.06.2002

PCF splinters

The attempt by the establishment parties in France to shore up the undemocratic Fifth Republic enters a new stage with the first round of the elections to the legislative assembly on June 9. Jacques Chirac's new grouping, the Union pour la Majorité Présidentielle, is now slugging it out with the former 'pluralist left', whose constituent parties gave him their wholehearted backing in the second round of the presidential poll. The Parti Socialiste, the Parti Communiste Franà§ais and the greens all called on their supporters to vote Chirac in order to keep out the leader of the extreme right Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and thus 'save the republic'. Now, however, for the first round at least, the principal 'enemy' for the left is the UMP and the mainstream right - although, of course, should the PS, PCF, etc be faced with a second-round situation where there is effectively a straight fight between the UMP and FN in a given constituency, they will have no hesitation in doing the 'right thing' once again. To qualify for the June 16 second round, candidates in the 577 constituencies must win at least 12.5% of the vote on Sunday. This percentage was set so as to exclude the fringe parties from the serious contest between the big guns, while giving an appearance of a fully democratic result totally in tune with the considered wishes of the electorate. The French are supposed to vote with their hearts in the first round and their heads in the second. The trouble is, as the presidential election demonstrated, they are all fringe parties now - no candidate managed 20% in the first round and the dispersion of votes allowed Le Pen into second place and the head-to-head against Chirac. It is likely that four or five candidates will pass the 12.5% mark in many constituencies - the FN will do so almost everywhere. What results in the first-past-the-post second ballot will be even less democratic than in Britain, since most candidates will win nowhere near a majority of votes. But that is not the concern of the mainstream bourgeois parties. Their primary concern is to work the system so as to exclude the extremes of right and left. True, Chirac is desperate to avoid another government of 'cohabitation' (a rightwing president forced to work with a leftwing administration), but another PS-PCF-green coalition would be a price he is willing to pay to marginalise Le Pen. A recent opinion poll found that 28% of those asked "agree with the ideas of the Front National". Only 49% are in "total disagreement". The least Le Pen can expect is 20 seats and perhaps the balance of power - the last thing the establishment wants to see. That is why fresh allegations accusing Le Pen of being an enthusiastic torturer in 1957 during the war to keep Algeria French have surfaced just a week before the elections - how very convenient. There is of course very little doubt that Le Pen as an army lieutenant was part of the repressive and brutal state machinery. He shares that dubious honour with many others who are now in positions of prominence in French society but who would rather keep quiet about their past. Just as they would rather forget how official France cooperated with the Nazi occupation. The difference is that Le Pen is proud of his past: according to him, the charges of torture, which he denies, "feed the attacks against the honour of the French army and veterans of the war in Algeria, and constitute an indirect apology to terrorism". After all, "exceptional methods" are sometimes needed, as he admitted to the military magazine Combat back in 1962. Opinion polls have been showing a narrow lead for the right in the run-up to the elections. But the UPM has been taking no chances. Because of the multiplicity of candidates, 12.5% may be out of reach in some seats. Therefore prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has called on supporters to cast a "useful vote" on June 9 - ie, ignore the smaller parties of the republican right and vote UPM from the first round. The mainstream left has also been trying to ensure that it is represented everywhere in the second round. The PS leadership appealed for a single candidate in the first round in as many constituencies as possible. However, because of the bitter divisions that are now rampant within the crisis-wracked parties of the old left, agreement was possible in only 34 constituencies. The PCF has drawn the short straw in the negotiations: it has only six of these 'united left' candidates to the Socialist Party's 18 (the greens also have six, while the bourgeois radical PRG has the other four). In another 150 or so, two or three of the four parties have agreed common candidates. The PCF will almost certainly emerge from the elections with its representation in the national assembly slashed - it could end up with only around a dozen deputies. No wonder the splintering of the PCF is beginning to accelerate. Opposition factions with their own publications have been operating openly for many years, but now, after the leadership's call to back Chirac on May 5 and then its agreement to play second fiddle to the PS in the legislative elections, open rebellion is the order of the day. Maurice Cukierman, a leader of the left Stalinist, national socialist Coordination Communiste, came within a whisker of opposing PCF president Robert Hue in the Val d'Oise. But in the end it was "too complicated, in that we don't have any real forces locally", said comrade Cukierman. However, other dissident candidates have not shrunk back - they are not only filling the breach where the official PCF candidate has stood down in favour of the PS, but in some cases are opposing their own party. In rural Corrèze the PCF-based Coordination of Communist Militants is opposing the official PCF candidates in all three seats. In the Bouches du Rhà´ne Charles Hoareau, a supporter of Rouges Vifs ('Reds Alive'), another PCF groupuscule, is opposing PS sitting deputy Sylvie Andrieu. Comrade Hoareau resigned from the party after its 31st Congress in October 2001. He is described by Gauche Communiste (Communist Left) as one of the dozen "communist candidates breaking with the political practices of the pluralist left and for the first time standing for a communism that is combative, popular and modern" (statement, May 8). Gauche Communiste is itself standing Jean-Jacques Karman in Seine-Saint-Denis against Muguette Jacqauint, the sitting PCF deputy who had intended to retire, but was called back by his party under pressure from the PS. Gauche Communiste, while denoun-cing the party's liquidationism, is, like other oppositionists, backing some official PCF candidates. It declares that it is ready to work "with all communists towards the refounding of a revolutionary and democratic Communist Party" (statement, May 8). Clearly this is not aimed exclusively at those from the 'official' communist tradition. Like the Trotskyist Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, Gauche Communiste, in addition to its call for a reforged CP, is proposing "the creation of a forum for a progressive and anti-capitalist alternative". The LCR believes there should be "local and regional forums" as a step towards the establishment of a "radical and anti-capitalist left" (statement, May 25). The LCR's approach is also twin-track. In addition it has called for unity with the other main Trotskyist grouping, Lutte Ouvrière, and proposed an electoral pact, whereby both groups would have contested 50% of all constituencies and recommended a vote for the other where they were not standing. After some hesitation, LO eventually rejected this, offering all manner of excuse for its sectarianism. Firstly, according to the comrades, the LCR were "refusing a common political platform", which meant that a whole section of the electorate would not have had the opportunity to vote for specific programmatic points. Much better for "each to defend their own politics and let the significance of the votes be clear" (LO response, May 6). This is somewhat disingenuous, since the LCR's proposals were for the campaign to be based on a "common declaration" (letter, April 29). After the LCR made its opportunist call to vote Chirac (or, as it preferred to put it, "vote against Le Pen" on May 5), LO, which called for a spoilt ballot, was able to point to this as an illustration of the gulf between the two groups: "There is no question of pretending that our respective politics are close, when they are the opposite" (response, May 6). Secondly, the existence of several factions within the LCR would, according to Lutte Ouvrière, have meant that the leadership would not have been able to keep to any deal, since there is a large minority opposed to rapprochement. As a true bureaucratic centralist organisation in the worst traditions of our movement, LO sneered at the inability of the LCR to hold together its various parts. Indeed it is true that the LCR's youth organisation, the Jeunesses Communistes Révolutionnaires, campaigned against a Chirac vote and called for a struggle against the Fifth Republic in opposition to the leadership line. Thirdly, the LCR had proposed that non-party "local cadres" be included in the electoral agreement. How can we countenance recommending a vote for "people we do not know"? LO asked (Lutte Ouvrière May 10). Clearly all these issues could have been resolved through negotiation, if the will had been there. The real problem is that LO has no conception of partyism. As LO spokesperson Franà§ois Rouleau explained at a CPGB forum in London on April 28, if the LCR thought that LO-LCR unity would bring forward the achievement of a revolutionary party, they were "living on another planet". That can only come about through the masses gravitating towards LO, it seems. Lutte Ouvrière is standing in every constituency in mainland France, and has candidates in Reunion too, while its co-thinkers in Martinique and Guadeloupe are contesting as well - in all LO has 560 candidates, compared to the 321 it stood in the 1997 general election. But the LCR is also building its support, as shown by the 4.25% its presidential candidate, Olivier Besancenot, polled on April 21 (Arlette Laguiller won 5.72% for LO). A third left candidate, Daniel Gluckstein of the Parti des Travailleurs (Workers Party), picked up 0.47%. On June 9 the LCR will have a candidate in more than 400 constituencies - a substantial increase on the 150 it stood in 1997 - while the PT will have around 200. In a situation where the once mighty PCF is in an advanced state of disintegration, it is vital that the revolutionary left takes working class unity seriously. LO and the LCR, despite the unfortunate duplication of candidates, may well win through to the second round in several seats. But how much more successful, and therefore viable in relation to the building of a united workers' party, would a joint campaign have appeared in the eyes of workers? The consolidation of support for the Front National should serve as a warning. "Already, according to the polls," writes Gauche Communiste, "30% of the unemployed and 20% of workers "¦ have voted FN. This dramatic finding shows that the working class, as a class conscious of itself, no longer has any political representation in this country" (statement, May 8). The left must ensure that the millions of votes cast for it on June 9 are not wasted. They must be used to further the struggle for our class's most precious asset - a united, revolutionary Communist Party. Peter Manson