Letter: Puzzled about Mélenchon (2022)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Socialist Standard,

I am puzzled by the rather a-critical appraisal of Mélenchon and his allies in the last issue. We learn that Mélenchon enjoys ‘support in the working-class suburbs and a growing influence outside the metropolis’. While true in terms of votes expressed, this neglects to mention that the majority of voters, especially working class voters, abstained. It also abstracts away immigrant workers, who can’t vote. And while yes, during the first round of the presidential election. Mélenchon was in the lead in the ‘outer-seas departments and territories’, as they are pudically called in French official jargon, the article omits that Le Pen was in the lead in said territories in the second round.

We also learn of Mélenchon’s ‘vocal anti-racism’. While it is true that, compared with the other major candidates, Mélenchon is a paragon of anti-racism, there are limits to this. For example, one might recall that after the murder of a teacher, Samuel Paty, at the hands of an islamist fundamentalist, Mélenchon decided the best course of action was to attack the ethnicity of the killer, who was Chechen. Truly the anti-racist icon of our times!

More importantly, who cares if a bunch of bourgeois parties have huddled together in the wake of their failure? Since when does the Socialist Standard care about the well-being of reformist politics? This is addressed as the ‘darker side of Mitterrand’s legacy’. Not only does this suppose a lighter side of reformism but it exteriorises the problem as some ghost that can be shaken off. All in all, a shockingly warm embrace! If a French revolutionary paper had glorified Corbyn and his crowd, I doubt the Socialist Standard would have seen it in a good light.

E.M., 

Cardiff

Reply:

I agree with most of the points E. M. makes. The purpose of the article was purely journalistic and descriptive: to indicate the main events, introduce the more important actors on the stage and guess at the possible outcomes of the legislatives. It attempts to describe a complex reality without the usual precautionary ‘only a movement which rejects reformism and aims at the abolition of the capitalist system is worthy of support’, or ‘socialist’ and ‘communist’ in scare quotes and so on. Readers can find that elsewhere in the Socialist Standard. Then again I omitted many other things: the fact that a majority of voters abstain, particularly the working-class. A good number of these, when they do vote, vote for Le Pen. But then again I also omitted to mention that in the group of people who abstain, a good number seem quite happy with their lot. It’s annoying.

As for Mélenchon’s reformism, I fully agree. None of these politicians can make the slightest impact on the overall functioning of the capitalist system. But, to be fair, none of them have made an explicit call for the overthrow of capitalism. I could have mentioned the smaller Trotskyist outfits who seem to be ferociously anti-capitalist. But as we know they condemn reformism and recommend a raft of reforms.

I was, of course, painting with a broad brush. But what seems to have annoyed E.M. is, I suspect, that I mentioned that Mitterrand’s government did introduce reforms of some benefit to working-class voters. Retirement at 60, for example. Why deny this? As E. M. will know, these reforms are now being whittled away by his successors very much in the way predicted in the World Socialist brochure on ‘Why Mitterrand will fail’. I distributed this excellent brochure on the streets of Paris during the 1980s. Understanding reformism, I contend, often means holding these two ideas in one’s head at the same time.

Mélenchon crops up as someone who seems to have understood the electoral inertia implied by Fifth Republic politics: a trap which marginalises popular politics on the left and the right and leaves the way clear for ‘centrists’ like Holland, Macron and others. (The scare quotes again.) Centrism encourages abstaining. So Macron has just said that he will reintroduce his unpopular reform of retirement pensions next year, a way to pump up the vote of Le Pen’s voters and sweep the field on the back of the resulting confusion. But notice also that Mélenchon secretly contacted Macron between the two rounds of the Presidential election – a revelation of the Canard Enchainé – to make sure that the scarecrow mechanism was functioning correctly. This is the darker side of Mitterrand’s legacy I was referring to. It will result in people slaving away to 65. As a consequence people will abstain.

On the other points, it is of course true that ‘immigrants’ in France, including myself, don’t have the vote. This is a state of affairs that Mitterrand promised to change and didn’t. But should I have also mentioned that his government regularised the situation of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants giving them access to employment rights and, in the long term, citizenship? This created an uproar. For my part, I was, of course, talking about ‘immigrants’ who do now have the vote having gone through the two-year marathon of paperwork to get the passport. Wannabe French citizens have an interview in which they have to show an understanding of the secular education system and defend it (imagine that in Ulster). This conveniently brings me to Mélenchon’s comments on the man who killed the teacher as he left his school: Paty. Here there are many things to say. The teacher had his throat slit because he dared to show an image of the ‘Prophet’ (whatever he looks like) in his classroom. In France, where religion and the state are separate, Paty was raising a philosophical point about free-thinking. Bravo! Perhaps Paty’s murderer did not realise these facts because he was a new arrival – a refugee – from a war-torn country. We shall never know. The conventional parties – many of whom lean towards Catholicism – readily used the occasion to stigmatise Muslim ‘immigrants’ and Mélenchon saw the trap. It’s precisely the kind of jiggery-pokery which keeps the ‘centrists’ securely in power and the working-class vote at home.

M. M.

French Presidential Elections: Capitalism Wins (2017)

From the May 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

There were eleven candidates standing in the first round of the French Presidential Elections on 23 April, a mishmash of left and right-wing populists and establishment parties, ranging from  the Trotskyist Lutte Ouvrière (Workers' Struggle), the nationalist and anti-US Union Populaire Républicaine (Popular Republic Union), the Gaullist Debout La France (Stand Up France) which is anti-EU, the New Anti-Capitalist Party headed by a Ford factory worker, and Jacques Cheminade, a follower of the American conspiracy theorist, Lyndon LaRouche. As no candidate secured more than 50 percent of the votes  (in fact no candidate obtained more than 25 percent) the contest is  going to a second round on 7 May.

What marked this election out from the others is that  the main front runners were outsiders – Marine Le Pen of the Front National, Emmanuel Macron with his new movement En Marche (On the Go) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the so-called hard Left  candidate.  What is also unprecedented is that, due to the deep unpopularity of his government, François Hollande, decided not to stand again.  Working class people are angry that  their living standards are stagnating and what they see as an indifferent and out of touch political elite.  Unemployment is running at 10 percent (about 25 percent among 18 to 25 year-olds) of the workforce  amidst a slow recovery from the 2008/2009 recession. Moreover, many are dissatisfied with the government's response to the recent terrorist incidents and there are concerns about immigration. This is not unique to France. We have seen how working class discontent has played a part in the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency and in the vote for  Brexit in the UK.

Because of the Hollande's failure to resolve the social and economic problems of  French capitalism, 'Socialist' Party members opted for Benoît Hamon, the more radical left winger, to be their party's candidate. His platform included a basic universal income, a tax on robots to pay for the retraining of workers that they replace, a tax on banks' 'super profits', raising the minimum wage. However, he only got a humiliating 6 percent of the vote.

Marine Le Pen worked tirelessly to rebrand the  Front National  as being more of  a patriotic party than a fascistic one, with having the same appeal as UKIP has in the United Kingdom, and even went as far as kicking her father out of the organisation. However, this has not precluded her from putting forward xenophobic proposals, such as giving priority to French nationals over non-nationals over jobs, houses and welfare and placing new restrictions on immigration. She is attempting to court the working class vote by promising to reduce the retirement age from 62 to 60 and reduce income tax for the lowest earners. She is anti-EU and  pledges to renegotiate the terms of EU membership and hold a referendum on whether to leave the EU.  A win for her could jeopardise the future of the EU and thus create instability within world markets.

François Fillon of the Les Républicains party was the favourite until he became embroiled in a financial scandal involving alleged payments to his wife for fake jobs. He was standing on a platform of austerity, pledging to reduce public spending and cut a half million public sector jobs. He wanted to increase the working week for some public sector employees, scrap the wealth tax, reduce corporation tax , raise the retirement age to 65, put a cap on unemployment benefits.

Now the favourite, Emmanuel Macron, who finished  top in the first round, is a former investment banker and economy minister in François Hollande's government. He claims that to be revolutionising French politics, but what he is proposing is pretty standard capitalist fare  – lower corporation tax, extending the working week for younger workers, reduce public spending by cutting 120,000 public sector jobs by 2022.  He is pro-EU and says he is in favour of a more open France which accommodates cultural and ethnic diversity.

Chavez-admirer Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who was backed by the 'Communist' Party, did surprisingly well with nearly a fifth of the votes, catching up in the polls and challenging the other front runners. His programme included reducing the working week to 32 hours, increasing the minimum wage and social security, raising taxes on the highest earners, re-negotiate the EU treaties. Like Le Pen, he pledged to reduce the retirement age to 60. That some of his policies were similar to those of the Front National is no accident. Both he and Le Pen were trying to woo the so-called 'left behinds',  workers who have seen the demand for their skills eroded and their livelihoods disappear with the economic and technological changes of world capitalism.

We predict with confidence that, whatever the outcome in the second round, Macron is the favourite, but Hillary Clinton was  the favourite to win last year's US presidential and the pundits expected the remain side to win last year's EU referendum.  However, we can predict with confidence who the losers will be and that will be the working class. For all their differences and grand promises, none of the candidates, including the two who went through to the second round,  challenged the capitalist system, that is the private and state ownership of the means of production and production for profit,  they seek only to modify it.  Once  Whoever is elected, their priority would have to be to ensure that French capitalism is competitive and profitable, and if, under certain conditions, this requires that social provisions are cut and workers are laid off, then so be it. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 

Oliver Bond

Letter From Europe: Whose turn to screw the workers? (1986)

The Letter From Europe column from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you are reading this article after 16 March you will already know the results of the general elections in France: Mitterrand's so-called Socialist Party (PS) will have lost its overall majority in the National Assembly, the National Front will have won a parliamentary representation for the first time, the previous opposition leaders will be arguing over what to do, and so on.

But this is only the tinsel of politics. The real issue in these, as in all elections everywhere in the world, is whether or not the wage and salary earning class is once again to put political power into the hands of the capitalist class that exploits them. Unfortunately, given the level of political consciousness in France, as elsewhere, the result is a foregone conclusion: these elections are going to be won by the capitalist class. Their control of political power will be confirmed by the re-election of a National Assembly composed exclusively of politicians pledged to support the continuation, in one form or another, of the money-wages-profits system that is capitalism.

The differences between the contending parties — whether the so-called communist and socialist parties on the Left or the RPR. UDF or National Front on the Right — are purely superficial, a question of which particular gang, or combination of gangs of place-hunters is to have responsibility for managing the governmental affairs of the French capitalist class. In short, who — the Left or the Right — is to have the privilege of turning the screws on the wage and salary earning class in France.

At the last general elections, held in June 1981 following Mitterrand's election as President. the Left won a landslide victory and a coalition government dominated by the PS — but with the participation of Communist Party (PCF) Ministers came into office. It promised to restore full employment by nationalising the banks and a few key industries so as to be able to plan economic growth, which would also be used to finance improved wages and social benefits. Naturally, as was predictable from a knowledge of the economic laws of the capitalist system, it failed utterly to achieve these goals.

Administering capitalism

After an initial increase in certain social benefits for the lower paid, within a year — by June 1982. to be exact — the new government had imposed a wage freeze and cut social benefits. Despite the nationalisation of the banks and the conversion of a number of firms from private to state capitalist enterprises, unemployment continued to rise and poverty to grow, as the workings of capitalism made a mockery of the Ministry of Plan's paper projects to expand production in the face of the world-wide capitalist depression.

In the end. the new government settled down to administering capitalism in the only way possible: as a profit-making system operating in the interest of the profit-taking class. The PCF participated in this anti-working class administration of capitalism for a full two years after the government's U-tum in June 1982. since its ministers did not resign till Laurent Fabius took over from Pierre Mauroy as Prime Minister in July 1984.

The outgoing government — essentially composed of members of Mitterrand's PS — is fighting the election not on what it has done to honour the promises it made in 1981 (how could it?) but on the negative theme of "we were not as bad as a right-wing government would have been". Thus, in one newspaper advertisement comparing the rise of unemployment under the pre-1981 governments with what had happened since 1981, the PS declared that unemployment had "only" risen 38 per cent since it came to power — the reader was assumed to have forgotten that the Left government had come to power on a promise to reduce unemployment, not preside over its rise to over 2.5 million. And one televised debate between the Prime Minister. Fabius. and the main opposition leader. Jacques Chirac, turned into an argument as to which of them had been the more successful in holding down wage costs — Fabius claiming that his government had been more successful than that of Chirac in the early 1970s but forgetting the PS's promise to increase, not decrease, "popular consumption"!

Since the Labour Party in Britain has a programme of vote-catching promises very similar to the pre-1981 PS — basically, trying to plan the expansion of production by the same mixture of state control and increased consumer purchasing power — it is worth examining exactly why the Left-wing government in France failed so utterly and ended up trying to transfer money from the poor to the rich (from wages to profits).

Why reformism fails

The classic reformist programme of trying to correct the evils of capitalism in the interests of the workers has never succeeded because the system just cannot work in the interests of wage and salary earners. It is based on their exploitation and functions according to definite economic laws which are beyond the control of governments, however well-intentioned or resolute.

Of course, there are certain things which governments can do. They control the armed forces and the other means of coercion. They can pass laws and apply them. In the economic sphere they control the issue of the currency. But they do not and cannot control the economy. Certainly, they can pass laws and make plans concerning economic matters but this does not mean that these can be put into effect or that, if they are, they will have the intended results. Capitalism, as we said, is an economic system subject to its own economic laws which governments ignore at their peril. These laws can be summarised as:

★ capitalism is an integrated world economy; there is no such thing as the "British economy" or the "German economy" or even the "American economy". There is only the world capitalist economy, which exists in all countries.
★ as government activity does not of itself produce wealth, all the resources allocated by governments (whether on "defence", social reforms or subsidies to nationalised industries) have to come out of the profits made in the productive sector of the economy, whether private or state-owned.
★ the private sector of the economy is exclusively motivated by profit-seeking, since profits are the main source of the finance it needs to continue to engage in productive activity. Indeed, in the end, achieving a monetary profit is the only reason the private sector has for producing.

In a depression the government — whether left, right or centre — has to pursue a policy of austerity for the working class because the logic of the capitalist system demands that priority be given to profit-making by capitalist enterprises. As a matter of fact, even in periods of prosperity governments must abstain from taking measures that threaten profits. In times of slump, however, they must do all they can to restore profitability: they must cut back and restrain both their own expenditure (which ultimately can only come from taxes and other charges on profits) and the wages of the workers (which are a direct cost to enterprises).

It is because capitalism cannot function in any other way that the outgoing reformist government in France ended up pursuing basically the same policies as openly conservative governments in Britain. Germany and America. The political colour of the government makes no essential difference; what counts are the economic laws of capitalism which these governments are obliged to apply.

In time, as the world capitalist economy recovers, markets will gradually re-appear but there is nothing that any government can do to hasten the process. They can help industry prepare for the recovery by encouraging it to "modernise" — to eliminate the least efficient enterprises — but this is what tends to happen anyway in a depression, whether or not the government intervenes. So all a government can do — and all the so-called "Socialist" government in France did — is to work with the economic laws of the capitalist system. This has been the fate of all past and present reformist governments in the world which have set out to make the capitalist system function in the interests of the workers and will inevitably be the fate of any future Labour government that comes to power in Britain.

Adam Buick 

World View: Is there a threat of fascism? (1997)

From the May 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the 1995 Presidential election, the Front National received just over 15 percent of the vote. But the FN achieved its greatest success in the municipal elections, in June of that year. It captured the councils of Marignane. near Marseille. Orange near Avignon, and the naval base of Toulon, all in the south of the country. In many other towns and cities, the FN received between 30 percent and 48 percent of the votes cast; and by the end of 1995. the party had 2.000 members sitting on local municipal councils.

In February this year, the FN captured Vitrolles in a dramatic municipal election victory, where Catherine Mégret, wife of Bruno Mégret, who hopes to take over the Party when Le Pen finally stands down as leader, achieved almost 53 percent of the second round votes (against 47.5 percent for the reformist‘‘Socialist" Party candidate), and became mayor of the town. Catherine Mégret did not empathise the Front's policy of the forcible expulsion of at least three million immigrant workers: in such an area, it had no need to do so. Many of the electorate are pieds noirs, former French colonists from north Africa who, in the main, support the Front National.

The Front's main support is in the south-east and south-west, the Paris banlieue (formerly Communist Party-controlled municipalities) and region and, to some extent, the Germanic Alsace area in the north-east of the country. The FN has the support, particularly in those areas, but also elsewhere, of youngish, "white" unemployed males, and petit bourgeois, poujadist, small shopkeepers who are continually losing out to the giant supermarket chains.

Although the FN has recently attempted to woo organised workers, and has even formed its own "trade unions" among the police prison warders and the RATP (Paris) transport workers, it has traditionally opposed strikes; and its influence among "blue collar" workers is weak. The Front National has opened up soup kitchens for unemployed ("white") workers, outside, for example, the Gare St. Lazare in Paris! There have, however, been fewer FN-organised mass demonstrations in recent years.

Is the Front National a Fascist party? Even some anti-Fascists have found this difficult to answer.

It is extremely nationalistic; and it even adopted Clovis, the barbarian chief, who converted to Christianity, and became the first Catholic king of Gaul. It is populist; and it includes among its members both right-wing conservatives who support "Thatcherite", free market economic theories, as well as supporters of a corporate state and economy.

At the same time, the FN has been able to accommodate many former members of small Fascist and neo-Nazi parties and groups. The inner "core" of the Front National is both racist and Fascist. Indeed, the long-time leader Jean-Marie Le Pen regularly proclaims the “inequality of the races", and also rants against what he calls “the worldwide Judeo-Masonic conspiracy” (see Le Monde and the Guardian. 5 March). And, like may Fascists, he has an extreme inferiority complex.

The Front National is unlikely to obtain the support of the majority of French workers. But with unemployment officially at 12.7 percent (probably more than four million), and many more workers feeling insecure in their jobs due to increasing redundancies and short-term contracts (as in Britain and elsewhere), together with the irrational nationalism and fear of "foreigners” (actually over 40 percent of all French people are immigrants or the children or grandchildren of immigrants), the FN is able to get a sizeable minority to believe mistakenly—and stupidly—that immigrant workers cause unemployment.

Peter E. Newell

French Election - Will the "left" win? (1978)

From the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month’s french elections could result, if the Left wins, in a new government containing Ministers from the so-called Communist Party (PC). This would not be new, even for France, since there were PC Ministers from 1945 to 1947, but, if it comes about, it will represent the re-integration of the PC in France into normal capitalist politics, taking turns in running capitalism, from which they were excluded at the outbreak of the Cold War thirty years ago.

Compared with Britain, the French political scene offers a great variety of parties but they can be gathered together, and gather themselves together, into two broad groupings, the “majority” and the “opposition”. The majority—the supporters of the present government under Raymond Barre who together had a majority of seats in the outgoing National Assembly—is made up of the RPR (Gaullists), the Republican Party (of the President, Giscard d’Estaing), the Centrists (Christian Democrats), the Radicals (Liberals) and other conservative groups. The opposition is made up of three parties who in 1972 signed a common government programme, the famous Programme Commun: the so-called “parti socialiste” (PS), led by Francois Mitterand, the PC led by Georges Marchais, and the Left Radicals.

This Programme Commun, on which these three parties fought the last general elections in 1973, and lost, is a document promising a long list of reforms ranging from raising the minimum wage to nationalising the banks and 9 big industrial groups. Things had been going smoothly for the Left—they made big gains in last year’s municipal elections—until, at the suggestion of the PC, they tried to update the 1972 programme. Talks on this broke down last September, with the PC accusing the PS of going back to its old policy of seeking to manage the crisis at the expense of the workers and the Left Radicals in effect accusing the PC of wanting to go too far towards State capitalism instead of merely trying to tame private capitalism as envisaged in the Programme Commun.

Actually, this sort of split is encouraged by the electoral system and has appeared also on the side of the majority. In France there are two rounds of elections. In the first round (March 12) anybody can stand but only those who obtain at least 12.5 per cent, of the number on the voters’ roll (or who finish first or second) can, if they want, go through to the second round (March 19). What in practice happens is that the broad political groupings—majority and opposition—agree to field only one candidate in the second round, the one who does best in the first. Thus the first round becomes a sort of primary election in which the parties in the same political grouping compete against each other.

This is essentially what the split between the PS and the PC is about. It is due to electoral opportunism on both sides: the PC hopes to pick up votes from the PS by promising bigger and better reforms while the PS is hoping to pick up votes from those dissatisfied with the present government but who don’t trust the PC.

This disagreement between the PS and the PC might in fact benefit the Left by ensuring them, through the extra votes picked up by the PS, the maximum number of votes in the first round and even an absolute majority of over 50 per cent. But the first round is not decisive; it is the second round which counts and the outcome of the second round depends on the “voting discipline” shown by the supporters of each political grouping, on the extent to which all those who voted for the competing parties in the grouping in the first round vote for the grouping’s single candidate in the second round. Thus the Left, even with over 50 per cent, in the first round, could lose if, for instance, some of those who had voted PS in the first round refused to vote for a second-round PC candidate or if supporters of the PC refused to vote for a second-round PS candidate.

The two-round system also allows the various Trotskyist groups to formalise their facing-both-ways tactic with regard to parties like Labour which we are familiar with in Britain: they can oppose the Programme Commun with their own candidates in the first round and vote for it in the second! The Maoists, on the other hand, because of their anti-Russia position, are urging abstention in the second round. Our sympathisers, as their election leaflet, which they will be distributing in France shows, are advising those who want Socialism to write “SOCIALISME MONDIAL" across their ballot papers in both rounds.

If the Left do win the press will make a big fuss and the American State Department will pretend to be worried. But, as far as the workers are concerned, there will be no basic difference, as is explained in our sympathisers’ leaflet. A Left government with PC participation will be no different from past Labour governments in Britain: a government with reformist illusions which will soon be shed when they are faced with the task of actually governing capitalism. And the President, Giscard, with the extensive powers granted him under the Constitution, will be there to ensure that they don’t make too much of a mess of it (as “leftwing” governments in all countries are wont to).

The “Communists” are not the bogeymen they are made out to be. You only need read their literature to realise that they would find a comfortable place in the Labour Party in Britain. They too don’t know what Socialism is and merely stand for capitalism modified by social reforms and State control. It can even be expected that, in the event of PC participation in the government, the trade union grouping they control, the CGT, would fall into line, like the Labour Party-dominated TUC in Britain, and agree to moderate its wage demands.

Adam Buick

Party News (1981)

Party News from the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Paris public meeting

There has at least been some sanity in this month's French presidential election: members and sympathisers of the Socialist Party of Great Britain organised a public meeting in Paris on the subject of universal suffrage and Marxism. Maximilien Rubel gave a talk on how Marx concluded in 1880 that the working class could change universal suffrage from an instrument of trickery into an "agent of emancipation" by mandating socialist delegates to immediately dismantle the state machinery of capitalism and establish socialism. Rubel stressed the importance of working-class consciousness in the transformation of society but when then suggested that we should adopt a reform programme to win support. The logical outcome of reforming capitalism could be seen on the way back from the meeting: large posters with the most absurd and vague slogans lined the streets: "France needs a president. V. Giscard d'Estaing"; "Jobs first: Mitterand for President" ("Socialist" Party); "With Huguette Bouchardeau for the alternative" (Unified Socialist Party); "Let's produce French: Marchais for President" (French Communist Party); and, most bemusing of all, "Now, together, act with Jacques Chirac". The alternative to this array of careerist hypocrites is for us to stop following leaders and cast a vote not for a person or a policy, but for a socialist society. The election issue of Socialisme Mondial, as well as a French version of the Questions of the Day pamphlet Pour le Socialisme Mondial is now available from Head Office.

Clifford Slapper

The future of work

Wealth in present society is produced only when there is the prospect of a profit; in a socialist society, production would be carried out simply in order to satisfy human needs, whenever and wherever they occurred. The contrast was brought out very well by Mike Cooley of the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee, at a conference in March organised by the William Morris Society and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Several SPGB members took part. Cooley argued that people could create high quality articles through satisfying co-operative work, provided that the priority was use and not exchange.

Modern technology will only act as a liberating force if the basis of society is altered from market competition to human co-operation. At Lucas Aerospace co-operating workers are exploring the possibilities of creating useful work and production, although their struggle for survival in the world market system imposes severe limitations. Mike Cooley also told how Lucas workers had occupied the Willesden factory to oppose "rationalisation". One weekend they left the factory and on returning found that Lucas Industries had burnt out the inside of the place and ripped the roof off.

Ray Watkinson spoke about William Morris' views on work. Morris saw useful labour as the only true art, and looked forward to a time when socialist co-operation would allow all work to become creative and satisfying. Watkinson neglected to explain how Morris spent his later years campaigning for this, through the political organisation of the working class.

The discussion that followed was chaired by Geoffrey Robinson, MP, who more than once slipped in a sly plea for support for the Labour Party. He spoke of the "need" for a harmonious partnership between labour and capital. A socialist from the audience suggested we should get rid of this "holy alliance" and institute real harmony in a classless society. Robinson replied that we should keep working for harmony within in the present economy, and keep socialism in mind for the future. "Like a carrot", came a call from the audience.

Letter from Europe: France's presidential election (1981)

From the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is said that history repeats itself the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. Well, history will repeat itself for a second time on 10 May when Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and Francois Mitterrand face each other in the second round of the French presidential elections, just as they did seven years ago.

If the first time wasn't a tragedy—it was more of an irrelevance really—the second time is certainly a farce, played out at the expense of the French working class. Both Giscard and Mitterrand stand for the same thing - the continuation of capitalism. The early stages of the campaign were enlivened by the intervention of a professional comic, Michel Colucci (Coluche), whose mocking of the professional politicians struck a chord in public opinion. But even he turned out to be as bad as the others when, after failing to get the 500 signatures needed for his candidature, he urged people to vote for Mitterrand, the candidate of La Gauche (The Left). As indeed - and of course - did the Trotskyists.

Giscard, the outgoing President, was born with several silver spoons in his mouth, even though he is not a "real" aristocrat (his father, a jumped up businessman who made a fortune out of exploiting the natives in the French colonies, bought the name d'Estaing in the 1920s). He, to use the confusing language of conventional politics, is the candidate of La Droite (The Right). To be their standard-bearer in the second round, he had to beat his former prime minister, Jacques Chirac, and ambitious and slimy politician who controls the Gaullist party. The rivalry between Giscard and Chirac was a purely personal one, their parties being nothing more than rival gangs of place-hunters (the French President has considerable powers of patronage).

De Gaulle, when he came back to power in 1958, wanted to encourage the emergence of a two-party system in place of the changing, multi-party system which had been a feature of the notorious political instability that France had known. His first Prime Minister, Michel Debre (also, incidentally, a candidate in the first round of these elections but polling a derisory percentage of the votes) thus devised the two-round election system in which, if no one gets an absolute majority in the first round, two candidates (normally the top two) go through to a second round run-off held a week or so later. When the President came to be elected by universal suffrage in 1962 the same system was applied.

This has more or less had the desired effect: there are now two broad political families competing for power, La Droite et La Gauche, the Majority and the Opposition, the Ins and the Outs, Tweedledum and Tweedledee as in other capitalist parliamentary democracies like Britain, America and West Germany. But—and De Gaulle and Debre had probably not bargained for this—it has also led, in the first round of elections, to intense rivalry within these families. On the Right, between Giscard's place-men (the UDF party) and the followers of Chirac (the RPR party). On the Left, between the so-called Socialist Party (led by Mitterrand) and the so-called Communist Party (PCF).

In 1974 Mitterrand was the only candidate of the Left and was supported by the PCF, even in the first round. Then, in the Autumn of 1977, the PCF suddenly changed its line - the first PC change of line not decided in Moscow, by the way - and broke its alliance with the PS. Ever since, the rivalry between these two parties has become more and more virulent, although the PC is supporting Mitterrand on 10 May and is demanding to have ministers in the government he may form.

The leaders of the PCF evidently calculated, some time in 1977, that if they continued the alliance, they risked losing support to the PS as the larger and stronger partner. This they were not prepared to tolerate as it represented a threat to their livelihood as full-time party bureaucrats. Nothing quite like the PCF exists in Britain: a highly centralised and disciplined party machine controlled from the top downwards by a small group of self-appointed leaders. In September 1977 these leaders shouted "left turn" and the whole machine, from the MPs and Senators to the local branch secretaries and dues collectors, obediently started to mouth militant phrases and to attack the PS as reformist.

The PC places the responsibility for the break-up of the "Union of the Left" on the PS which, it claims, has turned to the "right". But to an independent outside observer it is clear that it is the PC that changed. The PS certainly is reformist and only wants to be an alternative government of capitalism - as the PC says - but this was just as much the case during the period 1972-77 when the PC was its ally. Not that the PC is not itself reformist, even if it wants to go further along the road towards a bureaucratic state capitalism than  does the PS.

Although there exist in France these two rival political families it is not quite accurate to describe them as the Ins and Outs, since the Outs have never yet been in power under the Fifth Republic De Gaulle established (the last time "La Gauche" governed was in 1956 - but that was under the discredited Fourth Republic, and, indeed, helped to discredit it). That is why reformist illusions about what Mitterrand can and will do to solve social problems are so widespread.

To someone who remembers the run-up to the 1964 elections in Britain, this is all deja vu, but not many French workers are that familiar with the British political scene in the 1960s! Mitterrand is behaving like Harold Wilson did then, denouncing the incompetence and tiredness of the "outgoing President", promising to plan production and to divert profits away from the wasteful pleasures of the rich to productive investment and technological innovation. Whether the political gang who have governed France since 1958 (for even longer than Wilson's "Thirteen Years of Tory Misrule") will be voted out in this election remains to be seen. Whatever happens, it will be a close-run thing like the last time when Giscard won merely by 50.8 per cent to Mitterrand's 49.2 per cent.

Not that it will make any material difference to the wage and salary earners of France. If Mitterrand wind, he will govern capitalism just as Giscard did. At the beginning he may (like Harold Wilson) introduce a few reforms but will sooner or later have recourse to the excuse about being "blown off course" and settle down to governing capitalism in the only way it can be: as a profit-making system in the interest of those who live off the profits drawn from their ownership of the means of production.

Adam Buick

The French elections: Mr Nasty wins (2007)

From the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent round of elections in France resulted in the rout of the French Left. Were the workers wrong not to vote for them?

I wonder if you can still buy that little gadget which used to be sold in joke shops. It was a black plastic box with a slot on the top. You put a penny in the slot and it made a weird grinding sound which suggested that something amazing was about to happen. After about 15 seconds a small flap opened and a plastic hand flashed out and pulled the penny down into the box from which it could not be rescued.

Clunk!

The sudden shock of seeing one's own credulity taken advantage of and the resulting gasp of recognition is what many people may have experienced after the French Presidential electoral campaign in May. Nicolas Sarkozy – a kind of Gallic equivalent of Margaret Thatcher – is now in power for the next five years. France is no longer the exception in Europe.

Strangely enough although he managed to gain a large slice of the working-class vote, Sarkozy actually promised very little to the workers. Indeed he can be counted on to increase exploitation, unemployment and poverty. The reformist "Socialist Party" (PS) represented by Segolene Royal promised a hell of a lot more but the voters seemed unconvinced.

As always the presidential election was presented by some as an almighty struggle between Left and Right with Sarkozy quite effectively playing the role of Mr Nasty. By contrast, Segolene Royal proved to be completely ineffective. Her insipid and uninspired version of social reformism fooled no-one. To make matter worse, she presented herself in interviews as someone with a calling, an instrument of destiny. (Well, she does come from the same area as Joan of Arc).

For his supporters Sarkozy was represented as the epitome of modernity, economic liberalism, dynamism, and Blairism. His early morning jogging sessions contrasting with the more sedate political tradition of the conservatives in the party he inherited from Jacques Chirac. Royal was castigated for having expressed the outdated values of the Left, public sector immobilism, heavy taxes, anti-americanism and (don't laugh) Marxism.

So much for the media Punch and Judy stuff. In reality this was a typical election under modern capitalism. Media constructed stereotypes, disinformation, mystification and rumour crowded out reasoned argument and the impartial presentation of the facts. In the final analysis, the differences between the candidates were often minimal.

European Constitution
Anyone who knows anything about French politics knows that the real agenda of the election was the European Constitution problem. Because of growing distrust of an increasingly free-market Europe, the projected constitution originally dreamed up by Giscard D'Estaing was thrown out in a referendum in 2005. Besides being a set-back for capitalist politicians bent on creating a single competitive space to counter the other big capitalist nations, this was an issue which neatly divided the PS into two groups, the pro-constitution leadership and the anti-constitution left-wing with its popular base.

As a result Royal was obliged to promise yet another referendum on the issue whilst Sarkozy promised to negotiate a mini-constitution which would be ratified by parliament, short-circuiting the scruffy Euro-sceptics who were inevitably enough presented as 'extremists'. With Royal's idea being a clear non-starter, the capitalist money was clearly on Sarkozy from the start, all the more since Sarko's treaty could be ratified with the social aspects of the constitution edited out.

One of Sarko's first moves after the election therefore was to meet Angela Merkel to talk about the issue. With Merkel's government currently putting the German welfare state on a slimfast diet with active help from the Social Democrats this is one obstacle out of the way. In Britain, Sarko can count on New Labour's dyed-in-the-wool opposition to a social Europe.

As for French PS, well, their Mr Europe - Jean-Pierre Jouyet - has just joined Sarko's government. He was already on a train to Brussels on 15 May and nobody is calling him a traitor to the socialist cause (not even Royal, a close personal friend)

Thirty-five hour week
With the one really important electoral issue for the capitalist class out of the way, the secondary but routine issues of screwing the working-class called for more expeditive methods.

Shortly after the election the various trade union leaders could be seen going to see the new President one by one. (Trade union unity is not fashionable in France. Each union leader was interviewed separately.)Wearing the pinched faces of tribal chieftains invited to meet the new colonial administrator, the leaders attempted to gain a little negotiating leeway from a government which is fully committed to ramming home some pretty unpopular measures: restrictions on the right to strike, more flexible employment contracts, attacks on public sector retirement pensions, restrictions on entitlement to unemployment benefits etc.

Strangely enough, there was never any question of abolishing the 35-hour week; the flagship reform of the Jospin government, despite the fact that the conservatives had been moaning about how it penalized (their) business interests for the last five years. In fact, because the 35-hour week permitted capitalists to modulate working hours to meet fluctuations, it gave the employers the flexibility they needed to meet fluctuations in demand at low cost.

This issue did however allow Sarkozy to propose the defiscalization of overtime as a solution to the problem of a low and falling standard of living: 'work more to earn more' being the slogan. Not everyone was taken in by this idea. After all, overtime already tends to be paid at a higher rate and it's the bosses who decide the working week anyway. And it's difficult to see how this could be a solution to the deep-seated unemployment problem of the French economy. Joblessness is currently running at 9 percent.

Other measures introduced by Sarko include the usual neo-liberal medicine of tax breaks for the rich, the reduction of taxes on inheritance, and - a lollipop to the so-called middle-classes - tax allowances for workers with mortgages. The problem is that all these gifts have to be paid out of a state budget severely limited by the heavy and growing national debt currently equivalent to 60% of GNP. The solution is the so-called 'social VA.', the idea of shifting the burden onto the population as a whole remembering that the workers spend proportionately more on consumer goods than the wealthy.

Were the workers stupid?
Of course, it's tempting to see in the election of Sarko yet another illustration of the stupidity and blindness of the workers. This theme is doing the rounds right now together with the Leninist theme of the need for an enlightened leadership.Why didn't the workers vote for their proclaimed friends on the Left who promised them so much more? Why did they vote for their open class enemies?

In fact, on the European issue, as we have seen, Sarko and Sego probably shared a lot more than they are prepared to admit. Royal's party led by Jospin accepted a European agreement which committed France to raising the official retirement age to 65 though this has yet to be take place.

It could be argued that the 'social VAT' issue is conclusive proof of the stupidity of the French workers. But here, of course, there has been deliberate deception by the Sarkozy government. The measure was in fact deliberately downplayed by ministers until Fabius, a former French Prime Minister in the Mitterrand government, craftily winkled it out of the economics minister on TV.(This is already causing chaos in the government's presentation of its 'reforms')

On the other hand, Fabius will be well aware that this type of regressive tax is currently being practiced by the coalition government in Germany. It therefore has the official backing of the Social Democrats, the European allies of the French PS.

As for the defiscalization of overtime issue this has to be placed in context. The PS's 35-hour week has proved to be very unpopular with production line workers who now find their leisure periods moved around at the whim of their employer in a way which is often totally destructive of family life. Many have also suffered from stagnant wages as a result of these changes. The promise of more work for more pay clearly appeals to workers who are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet.

Royal's electoral programme was a barely credible wish-list of social reforms, many of them very desirable in themselves: slightly higher minimum wages, more money for hospitals, universities, schools, better pensions and so on. However when she was asked what miracle ingredient was going to be used to finance her programme (somewhat compromised by the profligate State spending of the last 25 years and the resulting heavy national debt) she mentioned 'growth' on the assumption that the French economy was just waiting for a nod from the left to get its arse into gear. In actual fact, whoever won the election a period of working-class belt-tightening was clearly inevitable and only a fool could believe in the promises of the P.S.

But if the official reformists in the PS were prepared to make the most unreasonable promises in order to get elected, the Leninist left was hardly less extravagant. And here there were three official Trotskyist candidates competing with the Communist Party to make bigger promises. All of them promised better public services, higher wages, better pensions and a reduction in unemployment presumably on the assumption that capitalism existed simply for the benefit of the workers. Few took them seriously.

In the end, Sarkozy's triumph was largely due to the confidence which people place in capitalist politicians of both Left and Right. Sarko's programme, which will not in any way satisfy the expectations of the workers who voted for him, seemed almost purpose-built to create a hysterical leftwing reaction. Because the Mr Nasty image presented by Sarkozy provided only a very wispy smoke-screen behind which the Left could hide its manifold weaknesses, the Right had a strategic advantage from the start.

But then again this is the way elections always take place in capitalism. Voter invest a lot of hope in the mystifying images that are placed before them. There is a lot of noise and movement, a feeling of anticipation.

And then the penny drops.

Malcolm Mansfield

French presidential election: now for round three? (2007)

From the SPGB blog, Socialism Or Your Money Back

When Francois Mitterrand was first elected President of France in 1981 there was dancing in the streets. Last Sunday when Nicolas Sarkozy was elected there was rioting in the streets. Perhaps there would have been dancing again if Segolene Royal had won. But, if so, it would have been as deluded as it was in 1981 - since within a year or so France had gone through three devaluations and the Mitterrand government imposed austerity on the working class.

As Socialists, who know from Marx's analysis how capitalism works, we know that what is decisive in determining what happens to the living standards and working conditions of wage and salary workers is not the political colour of the party or person in office but the workings of the production-for-profit system. It is not governments who determine how the economy works but the capitalist economy which determines how governments act. Sooner or later capitalism forces all governments to put profits before people and to attack the working class on behalf of the capitalist class.

The only choice in Sunday's French election was between somebody who said openly he was going to do this and somebody who'd be forced to it despite what she said. So our advice to workers in France was: it wasn't worth voting for either, but as always keep your powder dry for the struggle on the economic field over wages and conditions.

Sarkozy is unpopular because he has made no secret of the fact that he's going to impose austerity on the working class from the start. He has presented himself as a French Mrs Thatcher. Things, he argues, have been too comfortable for the French people; what they need, if France is to survive in the fiercely competitive arena of world capitalism, is not measures aimed to protect them from the effects of world capitalism (as Royal was promising, but wouldn't have been able to deliver any more than Uncle Mitterrand could) but measures to adapt to and go along with world market pressures. The working week must be lengthened, the welfare state cut back, employment protection weakened - and, in addiction, the suburbs where immigrants live must be cleared of yobbos with a pressure hose.

Sarkozy has got a mandate for this, but only from 53 percent of those who voted. This will surely prove insufficient to push through these measures without resistance from the other 47 percent (and from those who didn't vote). So, expect turbulent times in France over the next few years as the class war, initiated in this case by the capitalist class against the workers, hots up.

Adam Buick

Next Sunday in France

From the SPGB blog, Socialism Or Your Money Back

Next Sunday people in France will be voting in the first round of the French presidential elections. They will have a choice of 12 candidates, including one from the so-called Socialist Party, another from the so-called Communist Party, three Trotskyists and an "anti-capitalist".

We are often asked why all those calling themselves socialist don't just get together. The programme of the Trotskyist candidates in these elections provides one answer. When we contest elections, we campaign only for socialism as a worldwide system of society, without frontiers, based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, with produced solely for use not for profit. When the Trotskyists contest elections, they hardly ever mention even their (mistaken) conception of socialism (which in reality is state capitalism). They assume that capitalism will continue and offer only reforms to it, thus contributing to the illusion that capitalism could be made to work in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers.

A case in point is Lutte Ouvriere, the premier Trotskyist organisation in France. Here's how they describe their candidate's programme in the latest issue of their French-language theoretical journal Lutte de classe:

"The three major problems for the popular classes are the persistence of unemployment at an unacceptable level, the continual decline of the purchasing power of the toiling classes and the catastrophic state of housing for the people. These necessitate an urgent solution. This urgent solution requires a different use of the high profits realised by enterprises over many years. It is from these profits as well as from the hand-outs given to enterprises by the State at a loss that must be taken the funds needed to finance the maintaining of employment in the private sector and to create new ones, useful to the population, in the public sector".

In other words, capitalism, including a private sector, is to continue and there is a "solution", even an "urgent" one, within it: to use the profits of capitalist enterprises to create new jobs and build new and better houses. This is just demagogy as there is no solution to unemployment and bad housing under capitalism, as the experience of capitalism shows let alone a knowledge of Marx's analysis of how capitalism works.

But it gets worse. The naughty capitalists have, apparently, not been using their profits properly:

"The unprecedented profits accumulated by enterprises are not used for real investments, i.e. for the building of new factories, the manufacture of new machines, the enlargement of productive capacities with jobs as a consequence. That's the essential reason for the present economic crisis. Instead of enlarging the basis of production, the accumulated money is more and more financialised and only used for those false investments that are the take-over of enterprises by each other. Unable to enlarge the market with a sufficient rate of profit, the main aim of enterprises is to dispute with others their share of the market. The competition between them to outbid each other sustains a speculative spiral which, in addition, threatens the economy with a new stock exchange or monetary crisis".

There's a solution to this too:

"The only way to stop this rush towards the abyss is for the popular classes, the population, to impose their control over enterprises, over the choices made by their managements. The population must be able to exercise control over the enterprises day by day, over their finances, their strategies, their choices, their short and long term projects, so as to be able to oppose projects which manifestly go against the interests of society".

We don't know if they really believe that all that is needed to get enterprises to produce in "the interests of society" rather than for profit is popular control over their investment decisions, but that's what they say, so giving the impression that this would be possible under capitalism. That capitalism could be reformed in this way is of course just another reformist illusion.

We suspect we know what they are going to reply in response to this criticism: that these promises are only a "transitional programme" designed to lead workers, who can't understand the "abstract" idea of socialism, to realise through the experience of the failure of these reformist measures the need to get rid of capitalism (actually, to establish state capitalism as in Russia under Lenin and Trotsky).

In other words, there's a subtle theory for the "vanguard" and demagogic reformist promises for the thicko "masses".

Either they believe their promises (in which case they are reformists). Or they are just offering them as bait to win followers (in which case they are disreputable manipulators). Either way they stand condemned. Which is why we are just as opposed to them as to the openly pro-capitalist candidates.

We say that workers in France who want socialism can show this by dropping a paper marked "SOCIALISME MONDIAL" into the ballot box.

Adam Buick