The conjuncturally more favourable political situation immediately after the elections has enabled the responses of the NFP (New Popular Front, formed to contest the June 2024 legislative elections) to be highlighted, as well as the debates around its proposals. But it cannot make us forget the real relationship of forces, which requires us to confront certain major strategic questions. Patrick Le Moal looks back at recent electoral developments to draw conclusions in terms of immediate tasks: unity, reconstruction of an emancipatory horizon, need for a political force... in order to stand up to neo-fascism.
THE DANGER OF A NEO-FASCIST GOVERNMENT IS HERE, BEFORE US
In the first round of the 2017 legislative elections (in which 51 per cent of registered voters voted), around 3 million votes went to the FN. In the 2022 legislative elections (when 52.5 per cent of registered voters voted) the RN received 4.2 million votes, to which can be added the million of Reconquête (far-right party which won 7 per cent of the vote in the 2022 presidential election), or more than 5 million votes for the neo-fascist far right. In the first round of the 2024 legislative elections (where 66.7 per cent of registered voters voted), the RN collected 9.4 million votes, plus 1 million votes for the various far-right lists, or between 10 and 11 million votes for the neo-fascist far right.
In seven years, the number of voters for the far right has increased by 3.6 and represents 30 per cent of the votes cast, 20 per cent of of registered voters. Between 10 and 11 million votes are stabilized today for the RN and its supporters, and when abstainers vote, their number of votes increases, as evidenced by the 13 million for Le Pen in the second round of the 2022 presidential elections where the turn-out was 72 per cent.
These percentages are all the more worrying for us since the majority of these votes come from the working classes, the exploited and the oppressed, and that the Le Pen/Bardella duo has allowed them to obtain significant results in new parts of the electorate: young people, first-time voters, executives, the "CSP+" which are added to their support in the south of France and the devastated former industrial regions.
These results give the neo-fascists the means to be in the majority during the major electoral deadlines in the years to come, both the presidential and the legislative elections.
Although the "republican front" initiated by the NFP has prevented this happening, the current electoral system allows a political force obtaining 30 to 35 per cent of the votes in the first round to have an absolute majority in the National Assembly. The RN is therefore in a position to take possession of the cogs of the state apparatus, which would considerably change the relationship of forces and would represent a qualitatively different danger from what we have known since the Second World War.
These electoral results do not translate today into the construction of a neo-fascist mass party: outside of elections, the neo-fascist militant groups of the RN are not very much present in daily life, in social struggles.
But the climate created by the electoral victories of the RN, the constant increase in the level of violence of the positions taken and its polemical discourse gives free rein to racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, homophobic, transphobic and climate-sceptic prejudices, by clearly fascist organizations, violent far-right groups, but also at the level of individuals.
We have seen thousands of examples in recent months, from the uninhibited racist behaviours and ideas around us, in workplaces, including in environments with a strong left-wing tradition (among railway workers for example), the attempts at intimidation, including death threats on social networks, which have multiplied. All this indicates what a victory of the neo-fascists would mean for everyone, even if the electoral result has temporarily put these actual and potential attacks into perspective.
In the same way, we must take stock of the role that the Rural Coordination now plays and be concerned about its weight in direct action against environmentalist mobilisations, in particular during mobilisations against the basins or the A69 motorway.
Compared to the fascist currents of the 1930s, the RN did not take up the revolutionary aspect, the construction of the "new man", the upheaval of society. But the common ground with fascism is there, in defence of freedom of enterprise, of companies, of productivism in all its forms, against any autonomous class action, against democratic, associative, trade-union and political organizations, with at the ideological centre of gravity national preference, national identity, and racism in a country deeply marked by its colonial history.
The RN is today mainly built as an institutional force, increasingly integrated into the functioning of assemblies, municipalities, where they have elected representatives. One of their main concerns today is the capture of several hundred municipalities in 2026 in order to deeply anchor this evolution.
It already has significant support points within the state apparatus itself, as evidenced by its influence in the majority unions in the police and in the army. Let us not forget the column published in Valeurs Actuelles a year before the 2022 presidential election by some twenty generals, a hundred senior officers and a thousand other military personnel denouncing the "disintegration" of France, in particular "through a certain anti-racism" , "Islamism and the suburban hordes" and declaring themselves willing to support policies “defending the nation ". They added: "if nothing is done, laxity will continue to spread inexorably in society, ultimately causing an explosion and the intervention of our active comrades in a perilous mission to protect our civilizational values and safeguard our compatriots on the national territory". Le Pen was quick to endorse these analyses and invite their authors to join her movement.
Since then, the number of senior civil servants rallying to the RN and its perspectives has increased, and it is accepted that almost the entire state apparatus would "loyally" serve a government led by neo-fascists, as was the case when Pétain came to power in 1940.
On a series of defining political issues, the RN has established its hegemony, relayed by almost all the media,and governments, on the "immigration problem", Islamophobia, security and repressive policies that infringe on freedoms, on punitive ecology, wokism , etc. We are witnessing a “shift to the far right " of the right and of Macronism One only has to look at the conditions under which the Barnier government was formed. Added to this is the systematization of shameless lies, verbal attacks, symbolic aggressions by governments that brutalize working-class people, a whole political violence that can only find expression on the political and electoral terrain one day or another.
A part of the bourgeoisie is in favour of a libertarian evolution of neoliberalism, centred on the destruction of what remains of the "welfare state" and the limitation of state functions to repression. It views favourably those neofascists who seem useful to it in the realization of this project. Beyond this current, the relations of employers’ organizations with the RN have evolved, because neoliberal policies directed against the working classes impose increasingly harsh class confrontations, in which such a current can be useful. If in 2022 the Medef (employers’ organisation) called for a vote for Macron to block the FN in the second round of the presidential elections on the grounds that its programme risked placing the country "in a dead end", nothing of the sort happened in 2024 when the possibility of the RN being in the majority was much greater.
According to surveys, nearly 20 per cent of employers close to the Medef voted for the RN in the first round, and the CGPME (organization of small and medium-sized businesses) blandly notes that the RN scares companies less than the NFP. Official and informal meetings between the RN and employer leaders, and Bardella ’s reasonable statements to the Medef confirm this development.
One indicator does not lie: the rise in the stock market the day after the first round of the legislative elections which placed the RN in the lead.
This general evolution is not specific to France: today authoritarian, even dictatorial, governments and regimes, a significant number of which have similar references to the RN, dominate the world. This is indeed a global evolution of the mode of domination of capital, in which the rise of the RN is integrated.
If the danger is there, it is not a question of lamenting, but of measuring this situation, of understanding its causes and what is driving it, in order to act effectively. History is never written in advance, it fundamentally depends on the action of those below, of those who refuse this dominant order.
THE UNITED LEFT IS ELECTORALLY OVERTAKEN BY THE RN
In the first round of the 2017 legislative elections (where 51 per cent of registered voters voted), more than 6 million votes were cast for the various lists of what is now the NFP, twice as many as the number of votes for the FN. The LFI, by obtaining 2.5 million votes, was close behind the FN (3 million).
In the 2022 legislative elections (where 52.5 per cent of registered voters voted) the NUPES (front of left parties) received 5.8 million votes, to which we could add a million other votes for forces that are today in the NFP, it was still more than the 5 million votes for the neo-fascist far right, but far from double!
In the first round of the 2024 legislative elections (where 66.7 per cent of registered voters voted), the NFP received 9 million votes, for the first time historically fewer votes than the neo-fascist far right.
In seven years, while the number of voters for the neo-fascists has increased by 3.6, going from 3 to 10/11 million votes, that of the political left, all tendencies combined, went from 6 to 9 million. This is the raw reality, far from the percentages and the results in MPs, which form a kind of optical illusion.
We can use the political dynamic created by this optical illusion produced by the electoral system of the Fifth Republic, which allows the NFP, which collected 9 million votes, to have 178 deputies while the RN, which collected 9.4 million votes, only has 125, not to mention the fact that the Macronists of Ensemble, with 6.5 million votes in the first round, have 150 deputies. But we cannot mistake the illusion for reality, which in one way or another always catches up with us.
To determine our action in a situation where the NFP, which brings together all the left parties, from the social-liberal left to the "left for a radical change", receives fewer votes than the RN, we must start from this reality, using all the means at our disposal, to change this relationship of forces, deconstruct the most violent attacks against the working classes of recent years and obtain some improvements that would modify the relationship of forces between the classes in favour of the exploited and the oppressed.
THE BOURGEOISIE DRAWS THE CONCLUSION: ANYTHING BUT THE NFP
Neoliberal policies have crushed the electoral weight of the right-wing institutional bourgeois parties and Macronism , knowing that the latter has integrated the most right-wing part of the socialists who have rallied to neoliberalism. In 2017, this pole alone was more important than the other two combined, with more than 12 million votes (including 6.4 million for Macron’s République en Marche alone) against 6 million for the left and 3 million for the FN.
Between 2017 and 2024 this pole lost more than 3 million votes, while the left gained 3 million and the RN gained more than 7 million.
Today the three poles are between 9 and 11 million, but that of the right and Macronism has become smaller than the other two and the radicalization of votes has benefited the neo-fascists more.
The results in the European elections and especially in the 2024 legislative elections occur without the dynamic effect of the presidential election, but show that electoral volatility has its limits: there is indeed a fundamental evolution of the political situation, which goes well beyond the political crisis, of which it is only an illustration. Consent to the capitalist order, to neoliberal policies has been shaken, but this has mainly benefited the neofascists. If there has always been a right-wing vote in the working class1, "this conservative fraction, which was Gaullist, has shifted to the far right to a large extent. Another part, abstentionist, has also shifted. And above all, there is a generational effect2. "
This is what was understood by the bourgeoisie, which in this situation will always prefer the RN to the NFP and therefore will prefer to organize its class domination with the RN.
This has already started on the fringes with Ciotti’s rallying3, and we can see that the transfer of votes from LR to RN has been greater than those towards an LFI candidate ,when they were opposed.
This is also demonstrated by the fact of making public the dinners of RN leader Bardella with Edouard Philippe (former Prime Minister) and Lecornu (Minister of Armies) which took place in the home of a former member of LR who is a close adviser of Macron. This did not create any crisis, nor even much discontent within the right and in Macronist circles.
Nor were there any reactions to the publication of information on the "Pericles project"4 which organizes the establishment at all levels of power of an RN/conservative right alliance, by investing 150 million euros over 10 years to make their ideas the majority, in particular through think tanks and media, to identify priority elections (helping to win more than 1,000 town halls, including 300 by the RN, before the 2027 presidential/legislative elections), by providing a reserve of political personnel by means of training schools.
At the European level, the far right, which sometimes increases its number of votes significantly (France, Italy, Germany, Spanish State, Portugal) heads two governments, in Hungary and Italy, and participates in several governments with the parliamentary right, in Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Croatia5.
TIME FOR QUESTIONING, REFLECTION AND ACTION
On the side of those who fight against exploitation and oppression in any form whatsoever, the absolute prerequisite for any discussion, because the divergences within the left are very real on many issues, is to refuse to continue as before, as if this risk did not exist, as if our past action had been commensurate with this risk. Let us refuse the policy of the ostrich!
Many choices and much behaviour show that the neo-fascist threat is not taken seriously by many political currents6. However, if the current situation is of course the product of the evolutions of capitalism, ecological crises, the evolution of global power relations, it is also to a certain extent that of the policies implemented by the left, all the left, from the most right-wing currents to the most radical organizations!
The starting point for the discussion on the political and social deadlines to come can only be the idea that we have failed, and that we are all, each one according to our size and our means, on our responsibilities, called upon to take our responsibilities to prevent this advance of neo-fascists in the political field. Continuing as before will not respond to the present challenge: to obstruct the RN’s accession to state power.
For the majority currents of the NFP, can we say that the divisions and petty manoeuvres experienced during the European elections are permanently behind us? Were the motivations behind the formation of the NFP first to block the RN, as the vast majority of working-class voters on the left wanted (and as expressed by the pressure that was then exerted on the leaderships of the parties) or to save as many MP positions as possible in the National Assembly? To what extent did the political left use threats to save itself rather than taking into account the seriousness of the situation? At the very least, the question arises when we see, even at the time of the elections, the energy spent on the purges at LFI, the refusal of many candidates to run united campaigns, each party campaigning without seeking to involve the others, even less by setting up open support committees, or even by omitting to refer to the NFP, when that was the popular aspiration, and more broadly the absence of any mention of the RN danger in many professions of faith and declarations.
Although LFI allowed a political response to be expressed on a mass scale in opposition to neoliberalism and partly redefined the balance of power within the left, the Socialist Party emerged reinvigorated from the last episodes, with a renaissance of social liberalism which was even integrated into the NFP (Hollande- Glucksman ), and above all the new equilibrium on the left did not prevent the contestation of the existing order from being mainly captured by the neofascists.
The social liberals, split between those who were ready to negotiate a place in a government and those who think that only the NFP can allow them to rebuild themselves by erasing their policies in government for the last 30 years, are now already preparing for the presidential election, with each group seeking to put into orbit a candidate capable of being in the second round by getting ahead of LFI.
LFI’s strategy is centred on the presidential election and the prospect of a second round that would pit Jean-Luc Mélenchon (JLM) against Marine Le Pen, so all attacks are focused on Macron. However, this project seems extremely risky without a shift in the relationship of forces, which is only possible thanks to powerful popular mobilizations. We cannot replay the same policy in 2027 as in 2022 and 2017 because JLM’s position has deteriorated. However, all of LFI’s political choices are based around reproducing the same scenario. And even if victory were to occur, it would still be necessary to obtain an absolute majority in the National Assembly, which is less and less likely, a majority that would not prevent the fierce resistance of the bourgeoisie and imperialist institutions to any anti-liberal policy.
On the far left, the existence of an anti-capitalist and unitary current has enabled the political presence of a socialist, ecosocialist response, but without being able to influence the global relationship of forces.
For the union organizations, divided and weakened, the defeats that have accumulated since the victory of the youth movement against the CPE in 2006, despite very massive mobilizations, for example in 2010, 2015 and 2023, require a redefinition of the modalities of action. Since the success of 1995, the mobilizations have succeeded in delaying and hindering the counter-reforms, the attacks against workers, limiting the damage, but have never made it possible to win.
Feminist and environmentalist mobilizations have led to victories (Notre-Dame-Des-Landes, the Me Too wave), to advances in political struggles, in ideological battles, but do not today play a role in structuring the social movement on a mass scale.
The immense mobilisation of the Yellow Vests, due both to its largely spontaneous nature and to the delay taken by the organised workers’ movement and the currents of emancipation in understanding its importance, not only did not have any positive political repercussions, but electorally benefited to a large extent the RN, which had nevertheless kept its distance from it.
The mobilizations against systemic racism and police violence have shown the readiness to fight of a part of the youth, but also outside of significant structures.
ON THE CAUSES THAT LEAD TO THIS SITUATION, SEEN FROM THE SIDE OF THOSE BELOW
We are still feelingi the deep effects of neoliberal policies of destruction of working class concentrations, imposition of mass unemployment, impoverishment of important sectors of the working classes, repeated attacks on the achievements of the struggles of the twentieth century and the organizations that emerged from them, the destruction of work collectives by policies of individualization of employees, which means that workplaces are less and less centres for structuring collective action.
The acceptance by social democracy of the neoliberal framework at the time when the so-called "socialist" societies resulting from the revolutions of the twentieth century were disappearing after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as well as the transition to capitalism in China, led to the disappearance on a mass scale of the idea that it is possible to build from those below a society of peace, without exploitation or oppression, an emancipated ecosocialist society . Because a new factor intervenes with all its weight: the ecological crisis, which has upset both current societies and the socialist project. Because there can be no emancipation without a profound transformation of the productive system to reduce material production.
The conjunction of these briefly summarized processes explains this drift of a significant part of the working classes. Without hope of a better world built all together, the refusal or fear of downgrading, and the search for the foreign scapegoat have set in. The RN vote, particularly in the working classes, feeds on these fears, just like, pell-mell, the refusal to see disappear a world where public services allow a better life, where workers through their activity create human progress, where peasants dominate nature, where effort makes it possible to have a house, where the sacrifices of parents offer a better future to their children, but also where men dominate women, where France does not let itself be led by European technocrats, where whites are superior to men and women of colour, where "our country" dominates the colonies to be civilized.... It is a vote against decline, against the loss of what could appear as a solution to live better.
"In a period when a society or state appears to be in irreversible decline, its political, economic and cultural systems failing to adapt or progress... for individuals, this translates into a sense of disillusionment and helplessness, as larger historical forces render personal efforts seemingly futile, leading to recurring failures in their aspirations for a prosperous life7".
Why have left-wing activists, whoever they may be, not measured the extent of the neo-fascist electoral wave that has just spread? To answer this question is to question the nature of the link that we have, each at our own level, with the mass of the exploited and the oppressed.
However, the warnings were numerous and multiple. Surveys on the sociology of votes show a steady rise in the votes of manual and white-collar workers for neo-fascists since 1988, from 17 to 57 per cent for manual workers, from 14 to 44 per cent for white-collar workers. Until 2012, the cumulative votes for left-wing candidates were higher than those for neo-fascists in these two categories (for manual workers 47 per cent as against 22 per cent,for white-collar workers the figures are 42 and 29 per cent).
Since 2017, votes for neo-fascists have equalled or exceeded votes for the left in both categories. This year, among manual workers, the RN vote is more than double the NFP vote (57 par cent as against 21 per cent ), and also clearly among white-collar workers (44 as against 30 per cent). The vote for the NFP only exceeds the RN in intermediate professions (by 35 tp 31 per cent) and executives (34 to 21 per cent), among young people under 24 (48 to 33 per cent) and 24-35 year-olds (38 to 32 per cent).
This is a confirmation of the fact that left-wing parties that have relationships focused on electoral deadlines and that establish links within the framework of the functioning of institutions (parliament, town halls, etc.) have a strained relationship with the great mass of working-class communities Including LFI: the left that breaks with social liberalism, which has a real involvement in many mobilizations and has a real militant dynamic, remains focused on electoral deadlines and rhythms, with a central place for elected representatives. Seeking to create a buzz on the networks, to obtain votes in elections does not follow the same logic as working to organize daily struggles, work environments, living environments, to strive to deserve trust in the heat of collective action.
And the anti-capitalist currents are too weak to occupy this space effectively.
In the sectors where they are present, the trade union organisations are much closer to the workers, which explains the reactions, calls for voting and various positions taken: their leaders are aware of the pressure of the neo-fascist vote in the workplace.
The unions mobilized during these 2024 elections as has never happened before. The result is generally positive, because the vote for the NFP candidates in the first round of the legislative elections by people who declare themselves close to a union is in the majority: for the FSU (76 per cent), the CGT (61 per cent), Solidaires (52 per cent),in first place for FO (37 per cent), the CFDT (35 per cent, but still 29 per cent for the Macronists). The vote for the RN remains important, 17 per cent for those close to the CFDT, the CGT and Solidaires, 27 per cent for FO and 26 per cent for the UNSA which had nevertheless called to defeat the RN. Only the FSU escapes this situation (4 per cent vote RN).
The developments over the last ten years are interesting and show that work on the neo-fascist danger can have an effect.
For those close to the CGT, the vote for the FN/RN (17 per cent) has decreased since the first round of the 2022 presidential election8 where it reached 26 per cent (15 per cent in 2017, 9 per cent in 2012).
For those close to the CFDT, the vote on the left has not been in the majority since 2002 (with the exception of the broad support for Hollande in 2012: 56 per cent), that for the Macronists, which reached 48 per cent in 2017, and 44 per cent in 2022 is decreasing, while still remaining at 29 per cent and that for the FN/RN the vote has evolved: 7 per cent in 2017, 18 per cent in 2022, and still at 17% per cent today.
It is important to keep in mind that trade union organisations do not have permanent and direct contact with all workers, given the fragmentation of the workforce over the past 30 years: at least half of workers work in small establishments in both the tertiary and industrial sectors. The fragmentation of all work structures, the individualisation of schedules, teleworking and uberisation increase this distance.
However, the working classes are active in this country, unlike many others in Europe. And this on all fronts, in the most diverse forms: Yellow Vests, young people from working-class neighbourhoods facing police violence and more recently in the mobilizations of solidarity with Palestine, mobilization for the defence of pensions, demonstrations and ecological actions, feminist movements, LGBTI, peasant movements ... there is not a single layer of the exploited and oppressed which does not react in opposition to neoliberal policies.
But if the neo-fascists are not visible in social mobilizations, this does not make them disappear from the global political field. Strictly economic mobilization, not linked to the overall political struggle, is not enough to produce an emancipatory politicization: how many workers against the pension reform voted RN?
We must tackle directly political issues head on, with the conviction that the demonization of neo-fascists alone, while it may homogenize a portion of the working classes, will not be enough to change the overall balance of power. It is essential to act on the springs of the popular neo-fascist vote, to wage a battle for the right to free movement, because immigration is a good for society and not a problem, against the conceptions of repressive and exclusionary secularism, for international solidarity, social policies, public services, etc. and to reconnect with these parts of the working classes on the basis of needs, without concessions on the substance.
How can the exploited and the oppressed resist this spirit of the times, avoid catastrophe and rebuild a collective emancipatory project, rebuild another political hegemony?
"We need to build hegemony on the left and in the country in a single movement. Now hegemony is the opposite of exclusion: it supposes to aggregate diverse political and social forces, while exercising on them what Gramsci called a capacity of direction, and imposing our themes on them."9
TO STAND TOGETHER IN THE BROADEST POLITICAL AND SOCIAL UNITY
Faced with danger, the defensive electoral surge that prevented the RN from taking power mobilised, to ensure the success of the NFP candidacies, well beyond only the political parties that were members of this union built in a few days. All the activist circles were able to close ranks, despite their differences, their numerous and major divergences, in a rare unity, enabling and accompanying an exceptional mobilization of the popular classes worried about the consequences of a defeat.
The unity of the camp of those below has thus been affirmed as a pole of resistance, the only real one. The RN in power would delimit this camp, by repressing all its members in one form or another, including currents as reformist and right-wing as the PS and the Ecologists. We would all be in the same boat.
It was necessary to join this powerful movement for the victory of the NFP, essential as an immediate dam. But we must not stop at this political sequence.
The situation that is opening up is highly unstable, without a simple majority in parliament, with a president and leaders ready to do anything to keep their powers, a bourgeoisie determined to continue to impose its views, including with the RN.
The unity that was achieved almost naturally during the elections must be firmly anchored in order to face the political crises that will follow.
To do this, let’s start with what has existed for a few weeks. The challenge of the coming weeks and months is to sustainably carry out joint action against the common enemy in the broadest unitary framework, in which committees with the NFP as a reference are organized at the grassroots level, then at the national level in major joint initiatives, including all forms of resistance to the neo-fascist danger: unions, associations, all existing collective forms, in which political parties, both organizations breaking with neoliberalism, capitalism and the most reformist, are only one of the components, without imposing their agenda and their needs. The structuring of unity at all levels requires that it not be focused on supporting the action of parliamentarians, but on the minimal application of the NFP programme, and support everything that goes in this direction, unifying in action around the major demands of the NFP programme which oppose both the neoliberal policies of the Macronists and the RN project.
Are the NFP member parties, different as they may be, ready to get involved in such a perspective? They are electoral machines, none of them seek to rely on permanent, democratically organized militant collectives, which seek to permanently structure popular sectors, which set themselves the objective of organizing those below based on their daily needs, which breaks isolation and despair. So that will have to change!
Such a united political and social front is essential to change the global relationship of forces to break all processes of individualization, to rebuild everywhere militant groups that weave collective responses on a daily basis, in workplaces and neighbourhoods, on a mass scale, without waiting for elections.
The NFP has raised a certain hope and a significant mobilization that must not be disappointed. If division resurfaces, a second time after the NUPES, the failure would then be even more stinging and the electoral consequences in the medium term would be all the more serious. It is up to all of us to avoid this.
DIVIDE THE OPPOSING CAMP, THAT OF "ANYTHING BUT THE NFP"
The overall relationship of forces is not in our favour, we must do everything to strengthen our camp, and weaken as much as possible that of "anything but the NFP".
Unifying our camp is the starting point, but to go further, we must be able to divide the opposing camp, do everything to accentuate the divisions between them, without any illusions make occasional alliances, formalized or not, on all occasions, on all terrains.
Whether on anecdotal issues such as the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, on so-called social issues, on international choices, all political opportunities that arise which accentuate the divergences within the opposing bloc are good to take.
RECONSTRUCTING AN EMANCIPATORY PERSPECTIVE
This is a long-term task, to be carried out with our back to the wall, but it is essential if the objective is to truly reverse the relationship of forces. The question of a new political expression of the exploited and the oppressed, of a reconstruction of an emancipatory movement of the twenty-first century was at the heart of the reflections during the launch of the NPA. Its failure does not make disappear the need, which is today more essential than ever for those below, for the constitution of the "class for itself".
The socialist project needs a broad overhaul, at a time of "double historical crisis: the crisis of the socialist alternative in the face of the multifaceted crisis of capitalist "civilization"10. The ecological crisis is shaking our ability to imagine the future. The promise of a bright future thanks to progress, to industrial civilization has created a powerful imaginary that is behind us. We must recreate a credible, attractive common destiny, a unification of the popular classes around a positive project, around desirable axes, an ecosocialist revolution, to "put an end to the social and democratic regressions that accompany global capitalist expansion, but also to save humanity from an ecological catastrophe unprecedented in human history. These two objectives are inextricably linked”11 .Non-dogmatic revolutionary Marxists, who nourish their reflections with the experiences of struggles, can play an important role in the development of such a project, provided that they show humility, because the refoundation can only exist with the involvement of all the movements of struggle against all forms of domination and oppression.
The objective that we must set for ourselves is the construction of a movement, a grouping, an alliance, a front, ... a party with an emancipatory project, carrying a perspective of breaking with capitalism and productivism and of building an emancipated, ecosocialist society, and which places at the centre of its activity the response to popular expectations through mobilization, through self-organization in workplaces, neighbourhoods, associations, collective life ,without subjecting them to electoral rhythms, while understanding that these deadlines are important in building a relationship of forces .
Such a political instrument, which aims to organize tens, hundreds of thousands of oppressed people to be effective, can only be born from a maturation within all the most diverse political, social, and union experiences, and not by adhering to a ready made project, however intelligent it may be. It must rethink the articulation between all forms of action against the system: in elections, institutions, on the economic level, collective organization in workplaces, neighbourhoods, the place of cooperatives, concrete solidarity actions, in other words question the form and function of the entire traditional repertoire, that is to say, for example, redefine and rearrange the functions of a meeting, a gathering, a demonstration, a strike, a leaflet, a poster, a site, actions of civil disobedience, direct action, to give a global meaning to what is too often practised in a ritual way. The goal should be the multidimensional redefinition of the meaning and place of political initiatives and campaigns. For each initiative, define the objective(s), and measure what has been gained or at least advanced. Think about actions and tools so that they allow us to experience our collective power, and therefore strengthen it, with self-organization playing a decisive role. It is in the back-and-forth movement between reflections and practices that a political alternative can be born. The inventiveness of the "Earth Uprisings" shows us the way.
To tackle this task, we must fully appreciate its difficulties.
LFI occupies a central and essential place as an anti-liberal left-wing force. Its existence has made it possible to combat the orientations of the social-liberal left, to the emergence of deputies from the social movement and the mobilization of a part of the youth. It has a real audience in a certain number of working-class neighbourhoods, but its relative place within the left has declined, undoubtedly partly in connection with its practice towards the social movement.
At the beginning of the huge mobilization of 2023 against the pension reform, JLM thought he was in a position to lead the movement without the union organizations, LFI was at the initiative of a major demonstration, but it was not commensurate with the mobilization capacities of the inter-union coordination. And when, led by the latter, the movement took on its full scale, LFI blocked by its policy of obstruction in parliament12.
October 25, 2024
Translated by International Viewpoint from Contretemps.
- 1
It is estimated that in 1981, 30 per cent of workers voted for Giscard d’Estaing in the second round against Mitterrand.
- 2
Xavier Vigna, « La gauche n’a pas de stratégie nationale pour reconquérir ses territoires perdus », Mediapart, 28 juillet 2024.
- 3
Eric Ciotto was leader of the traditional right party, Les Républicains, LR. He took a small minority of his party with him to support the RN
- 4
L’ Humanité July 19, 2024.
- 5
Léon Cremieux Léon Cremieux “Elections au parlement européen : poussée réactionnaire et noyaux de résistance” Inprecor ,July-August 2024.
- 6
Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison “Partisan lefts: political and electoral sleepwalking”.
- 7
Daniel Bastard, « La Chine est-elle en train de tomber dans les poubelles de l’histoire ? » Courrier International 22 July 2024
- 8
Jean-Marie Pernot, « Proximités syndicales et vote politique, Le premier tour de l’élection présidentielle » https://syndicollectif.fr/proximites-syndicales-et-vote-politique/
- 9
Cédric Durand, Razmig Keucheyan et Stefano Palombarini, « Construire la gauche de rupture« , Contretemps, 22 July 2024.
- 10
Draft of the “Manifesto of revolutionary Marxism in the era of the ecological and social destruction of capitalism”.
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Idem.
- 12
See CGT leader Philippe Martinez’s statement of February 19, 2023: "the fact of not having gone to article 7 so that everyone could display their position is a problem (...). It was necessary to make the deputies, each deputy, face their responsibilities (...). Through numerous incidents - let’s put it like that - we have discussed these incidents more than the heart of the problem and what is being debated in the street" with the union mobilization, he said, pointing to "political forces [which] are trying to replace the union organizations and to put themselves forward in relation to [those] who are marching in the street."