20.06.2002
Golden opportunity missed
The victory of the right in France's parliamentary elections ought to have come as no surprise. It was, after all, the logical corollary of Jacques Chirac's massive defeat of Jean-Marie Le Pen in May's presidential elections. And it is not only the mainstream left, but the cause of the working class that has been set back. Following on from Chirac's 80% landslide on May 5, his new grouping, the Union for a Presidential Majority (UMP), together with a smaller rightwing grouping, the UDF, won 399 of the 577 seats in the national assembly. The Parti Socialiste lost 108 seats, reducing it to 140, while the Parti Communiste Franà§ais suffered a similar fate: it was left with just 21 parliamentary deputies, compared with 35 after the 1997 general election. In total the left lost 136 seats, while the right gained 154. It was a good result not only for the UMP, but for bourgeois stability and the defenders of the undemocratic Fifth Republic. The mass upsurge of anger that greeted Le Pen's success in winning through to the second round of the presidential elections has, it seems, been channelled safely back into the mainstream - thanks to the actions of both the reformist and revolutionary left in calling for a vote for Chirac (or, in the case of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, "against Le Pen"). PCF general secretary Robert Hue attempted to justify this dismal advice by claiming, improbably, that a huge victory for Chirac would somehow diminish the legitimacy of his presidency and strengthen the left's hand: "The weaker Le Pen's showing, the more difficult it will be for Jacques Chirac to paint the result as massive support for his own candidacy," he wrote in a statement to party members. The absurdity of this reasoning will hopefully have been brought home to Hue when he lost his own seat on June 16. The PCF leadership knew perfectly well what it was doing. It had seen the potential of the masses, as they began to look to the power of their own self-activity, and it did not like it. But what excuse was there for the LCR, whose advice also helped to defuse the situation? Instead of attempting to win the mass movement for a battle against the crisis-ridden Fifth Republic of the capitalists, it helped to shore it up. In the words of the revolutionary democratic publication, Lettre de Liaisons, the left "preferred to save the Fifth Republic rather than overthrow it" (June 18). The other main grouping of the revolutionary left, Lutte Ouvrière, was little better. While it refused to join in with the general anti-Le Pen panic and called for a spoilt vote in the second round, it tended to dismiss both the extreme right and the mass movement that sprung up to oppose it as irrelevant. A golden opportunity missed. The masses were not only outraged by the possibility - however remote - of an ultra-chauvinist, anti-semite bigot as president: they were increasingly questioning the nature of a system whose method of election could leave them with a non-choice between two reactionaries who in the first round had won the support of just 25% of those entitled to vote. The situation called for a mass campaign for an active boycott of the second round, using the most militant working class methods. Most of the left in Britain criticised the LCR's "vote against Le Pen" line. For example, the Socialist Workers Party's Chris Harman commented that there was "no need for the left to vote for Chirac in order to stop Le Pen" (Socialist Review June). But, according to comrade Harman, the left ought to have told the masses who thought they had to vote for a "crook, not a fascist": "We don't agree, but let's act together over the things we do agree on - taking to the streets and exposing what Le Pen really stands for." All very well, but not enough. The mass movement needed a programme - an anathma for the SWP. Without a programme - for extreme democracy and a Sixth Republic - the movement was bound to stay within the safe bounds of reformism and quickly dissipate. The SWP therefore had no more idea of the potential of the mass movement - and its limitations - than the LCR or LO it criticised. Both of them believed that, following their excellent showing in the 'presidentials' (over 10% and almost three million votes for the revolutionary left), they would be able to consolidate their electoral support in the 'legislatives'. The results of the first round were desperately disappointing. LO, which stood in every constituency in mainland France, polled 304,000 votes (1.2%), compared to 1.6 million on April 21. The LCR did marginally better, winning over 320,000 in 450 constituencies (1.64% where it contested). The smaller Parti des Travailleurs picked up another 80,000 votes in 193 constituencies. Only the LCR's presidential candidate, Olivier Besancenot, got a half-decent result (5.47%). Other returns of note were won by PCF left dissidents JJ Karman (10.3% in Aubervilliers) and Charles Hoarau (4.2% in Marseilles). The revolutionary left has seemingly been reduced to British levels of electoral support. Nowhere did it attain the 12.5% it needed to qualify for the second round last Sunday. The LCR consoled itself with the thought that the left had maintained its overall support, compared to 1997. And it had done better than Lutte Ouvrière, which had been "punished for its sectarianism and its policy between the two rounds of the presidential elections". The truth is, the whole of the revolutionary left had been "punished" for its failure to grasp the opportunity presented by that period of crisis for the Fifth Republic. While the ultra-economistic LO sought comfort in remarks about elections being only a thermometer - workers must "act in the workplaces" - the LCR congratulated itself on the drop in support for Le Pen's Front National. This was "the result of the anti-fascist mobilisation after April 21", for which it thought at least it could claim some credit. It seems to have escaped the comrades' attention that official France is also rejoicing at the FN's poor showing. The far right polled 12.5% on June 9, compared to 19.2% for its two candidates on April 21. The FN scraped into the second round in only 37 constituencies and failed to win a seat. The establishment has good reason to be satisfied. True, the low turnout of 64% pointed to considerable disenchantment, but while this remains passive it is no cause for concern for the ruling class. Meanwhile, many a commentator was pointing to the "American-style bipolarisation" - ie, what they hoped would be the emergence of two main parties, the end of unstable coalition-mongering, and particularly the avoidance of another left-right government of 'cohabitation'. In the run-up to the elections the parties of the mainstream right and left appealed to the electorate to cast a "useful vote" in the first round - they did not want a repeat of the humiliation of April 21, when the Socialist Party's Lionel Jospin was eliminated by Le Pen as a result of the scattering of the left vote amongst several candidates, while Chirac himself polled under 20% through a similar phenomenon on the right. Their advice was followed. Not only was the FN cut down to size; so was the once mighty PCF, now reduced to under five percent support, whose deputies owe their election to the votes of disciplined Socialist Party supporters. While the 'pluralist left' as a whole was marginalised, the Parti Socialiste itself actually held its support at 1997 levels. No doubt its leaders will be re-evaluating their relationship with the PCF - the aim will be to sideline the extreme left as well as the extreme right of bourgeois politics. All this exposes the SWP's wishful 'analysis' of the current period, as it relates to Europe and France in particular. According to Kevin Ovenden, what we are seeing is the "collapse of centre parties" and the "polarisation of politics" (Socialist Review June). For comrade Ovenden, "The crisis in Europe resembles the 1930s in slow motion (but speeding up) "¦ Working class resistance is growing "¦ The bitterness with the system is even greater now [than the mid-1990s] and more generalised." He concludes by declaring with the utmost certainty: "There will be no return to 'normality' on the right "¦" Anyone can see that official France is attempting to exploit the "political earthquake" of April 21 in order to establish bourgeois "normality" in the shape of a safe, two-party system, based on the centre-right and centre-left. Of course, whether it succeeds depends on the balance of class forces, not on some predetermined schema or SWP-style dogma. Peter Manson