New Anti-Capitalist Party academic advocates surrender to Sarkozy’s cuts?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Sectarian article with points to consider: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/corc-o25.shtml



By Alex Lantier

On Saturday, Le Monde, France’s daily newspaper of record, posted comments on the ongoing strike movement against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s austerity policies by Philippe Corcuff, a university sociologist and member of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA). Together with other “philosophers” quoted by Le Monde, Corcuff expressed his hostility to mass strike action against Sarkozy.

Le Monde’s promotion of such forces is a calculated move, at a critical point in the struggle, to demoralize and disorient the strike movement.

Despite overwhelming popular support for expanding the strikes and protests against the cuts, the unions have put off all further national strike action until after Parliament passes Sarkozy’s pension “reform.” The determined action of oil and transport workers has resulted in a crippling gasoline shortage, but the unions are deliberately isolating their strikes.

Using the critical breathing space granted by the unions, Sarkozy is sending riot police to break up the picket lines and blockades of refinery workers, smashing strikes at Grandpuits, Fos and other workplaces.

Corcuff’s reaction is a shameful capitulation to Sarkozy and the French ruling class. As workers face a political struggle against the state, Corcuff and his colleagues are intervening via Le Monde to advocate a policy of surrender.

Corcuff says that workers should focus on “playful” protest actions. He fears that if workers mount more forceful actions that are criticized in the press, “this could re-legitimize Sarkozy’s discourse on security.”

His proposal echoes the line of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT). The Stalinist-led CGT said it would mount only “symbolic” actions against the government’s use of riot police to reopen the struck Grandpuits refinery near Paris.

Corcuff fully supports the unions’ treachery. Le Monde warns that further economic shortages “will provoke a break with public opinion” quoting Corcuff: “The feeling of having public support is very important for union officials.”

The reality is the opposite of the demoralized perspective of Corcuff. The situation is characterized by mass popular opposition to the cuts—70 percent according to recent polls—and overwhelming popular support for the strikes. The surest way to dissipate public support for the workers is to temporize and show an unwillingness to take the fight all the way.

The opinion to which both Corcuff and the unions bow is not that of the broad public, but rather of the bourgeoisie and its media mouthpieces. This is not, however, primarily the result of a faulty analysis or misapprehension of the situation. On the contrary, the unions—and their acolytes in the NPA—are fully aware of the spreading mood of revolt in the working class, and they respond with fright and hostility. All of their efforts are concentrated on finding the best means of deflating the mass movement and suppressing it.

In another interview with Le Monde, Professor Cynthia Fleury more openly advocates the intervention of middle-class elements to end mass opposition to Sarkozy. According to Le Monde, Fleury specializes in theorizing “methods of regulating democracy”—or, to be more truthful, strangling it.

Bluntly asserting despite all evidence that the population “agrees with the final goal: the reform of pensions,” she adds that “the street, which governs by its veto power,” has emerged as a form of “negative sovereignty” whose control “is the great challenge facing modern democracy.” Fleury concludes that “new democracy” could emerge from “the appearance of qualified majorities in the public debate, be it of trade union officials, professors, and so on.”

She declares that opposition comes not from “the plebeians.” “That is finished,” she proclaims. “There aren’t ‘crowds,’ there aren’t ‘masses,’ there are educated and organized individuals who are a force for proposing policies.”

Figures like Fleury and Corcuff speak for privileged and arrogant sections of the middle class, who view social opposition in the working class with contempt and fear. Convinced of the necessity of social cuts, they are bitterly hostile to working-class struggle against Sarkozy because they realize it would rapidly lead to a confrontation of the workers with the union bureaucracy. This would expose both the unions and the class-collaborationist politics of the NPA.

Indeed, Corcuff views the prospect of a working-class movement for a general strike independent of the unions with hostility and alarm. In his latest blog posting (“For durable and pacific social guerrilla warfare”), he explains: “The level of agreement and radicalization inside the national all-trade union alliance does not allow us to hope for the possibility of a call for broad, lasting strikes. One may regret this, but one has to take this reality into account.”

Corcuff does not explain why the unions’ refusal to organize mass industrial action means that workers must follow the unions’ lead and abstain from organizing it themselves. Instead, he writes: “Is not the principal task preserving…the ineluctable cohabitation of the prudent and radical poles?”

Such comments expose the utter charlatanry of the New Anti-Capitalist Party. Any serious struggle against capitalism and the capitalist state entails a political struggle against advocates of class collaboration, like the CGT. However, Corcuff’s so-called “anti-capitalism” does not extend quite so far as this first prerequisite for a struggle against the profit system.

To be sure, Corcuff does not oppose using the phrase “general strike.” Only, he insists that a new and completely impotent meaning be attached to the term—so that even a right winger like Corcuff can use the term while giving interviews to the bourgeois press. For Corcuff, a general strike means “a demand for generalizing from concrete experiences.” He keeps any explanation of what this jargon means to himself.

The World Socialist Web Site has called for workers to form committees of action to coordinate independent strike activity against Sarkozy. The committees would work to unite all sections of the working population and broaden the struggle against austerity measures and unemployment, preparing the ground for a general strike to bring down the Sarkozy government and replace it with a workers government based on socialist policies.

Corcuff makes clear he opposes such a struggle. It would be “rigid,” he writes, to “consider the generalization of the strike to all workers, students and high school students at a given time as the only modality for building a convergent social movement capable of winning victories.” Instead, Corcuff “converges” back to his previous “modality” of demanding an alliance with right-wing forces: “a perspective of generalization presupposes at least keeping the most prudent and moderate sectors on the side of the mobilization.”

He recoils in horror from the “unity” and “centralization” of the class struggle, explaining: “This tends to crush the Multiple under the hegemony of the One.” He elaborates, in his own fashion: “Politics consists of creating a common space starting from human plurality that does not crush this plurality in the name of the One.”

All of this pseudo-intellectual blather reduces itself to the anxiety of more privileged sections of the middle class at the prospect of the emergence of the working class as a politically conscious and unified social force. This is what draws him inexorably to the trade union bureaucracy—another well-off layer of the middle class that sees the class struggle as a threat to its privileges.

Corcuff is not the only university “intellectual” in France who tries to confuse people with the jargon employed to put students to sleep in the classroom. He is, however, a specialist in providing “left”-sounding formulas for opposing revolutionary struggle by the working class. The positions he advances underscore the significance of the NPA’s public repudiation of any, even verbal association with Trotskyism at its 2009 founding congress. This was a public acknowledgement of hostility to Marxism and the working class.

In a May 2009 article, “Anti-productivism and anti-capitalism: new convergences,” Corcuff described his attempt to work out an alliance between the NPA and forces around the ecologist Movement of Objectors to Economic Growth (MOC). The NPA ran several regional campaigns with the MOC in the March regional elections.

Corcuff’s article denounced economic production and called for an “anti-productivist cultural revolution.” Similarly, as strike struggles developed among French auto workers, the late NPA university philosopher Daniel Bensaïd described the automobile industry as “industrially decrepit and ecologically problematic.”

The deeply reactionary content of such views is reflected in Corcuff’s attacks on Marx for his alleged “productivist fascination.” The professor writes: “It’s not a question of abandoning entire sections of the Enlightenment creed—reason, science, or progress—but depriving them of their dominant and absolute position, making them only wagers in the face of ecological anxiety. It’s what I have elsewhere called the Blinkered Enlightenment.”

With his blinkered opposition to science, Marxism and the working class, Corcuff is part of the intellectual rearguard that social reaction maintains for use against the working class in times of crisis. In denouncing the general strike and advocating surrender to Sarkozy’s social cuts, he is playing his appointed role: a middle-class agent of the financial aristocracy.

[Lolshevik]

the thing says he's a member. not an npa spokesman.

i think he oughtta get kicked out of the party.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Why doesn't the article explicitly call out his post-modernism (and the trash of post-modernism)?

[Martin Blank]

Sectarian article with points to consider: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/corc-o25.shtml

I don't think it's quite fair to call the article "sectarian". Yes, it's a sharp polemic against the NPA, but, let's be honest, they earned it. I read the Le Monde article and it is as bad as it sounds.

Corcuff lined himself (and the NPA, by association) up with the PS and PCF, who, through their union officials in the CFDT and CGT, respectively, killed the workers' strikes and protests. That is very much the broader context. A little closer to home, I'd like to know why Besancenot, the de facto spokesperson for the NPA, kept his mouth shut after this article came out. For that matter, where was he for the week before?

At the beginning of these strikes and protests, his comments were all over the place, but by the time of this Le Monde article, all of his criticisms of the union officials, of their failed and treacherous tactics, etc., seemed to have been shelved. I think it's fair to say that Besancenot abdicated his place to Corcuff at a critical moment in the strike and protest movements, and that, given the NPA's relative size and influence in unions like the CGT and SUD-Solidaires, it had no small impact.

I also find it interesting that none of the other self-described Trotskyist organizations with tendencies in the NPA (USec [Majority and Minority], CWI, IST, L5I) have said anything formal about it. At least, I have yet to see something from any of them. I would think that one of them would be howling about this kind of betrayal by now.

Then again, perhaps not.


the thing says he's a member. not an npa spokesman.

I do understand that, but the disappearance of Besancenot from the media raises real questions. Moreover, it's usually the case that: a) the interviewee gets at least a day to prepare for talking to the media (unless it's breaking news, and this wasn't); and b) the person lets the party know about the interview before it happens, and especially before it goes to print.

If that didn't happen, then either there is a real communication problem in the NPA (doubtful) or Corcuff is too much of a renegade to be trusted in the party (very likely). On the other hand, if he did let them know, I would think that, first, someone would ask what the interview was about and what he intended to say, and, second, someone would have blown a gasket over what he intended to say to the press. I can't see someone being able to slit the throat of the party like that in the media without some kind of uproar ... unless, and this is what I'm beginning to think, Corcuff's view has significant support in the NPA.


i think he oughtta get kicked out of the party.

Expelled, never allowed back into membership, barred from being a supporter, and publicly denounced in the NPA's paper and in a statement to the media by Besancenot. That's the least that should happen.


Why doesn't the article explicitly call out his post-modernism (and the trash of post-modernism)?

The SEP has the cancer of post-modernism in some of their theory. But I suspect it's mainly because that's more of a diversion from the point of their article.

[Kibbutznik]

Why doesn't the article explicitly call out his post-modernism (and the trash of post-modernism)?
Quite frankly, we'd have to know what post-modernism is in order to call it out. The term has been over-used to the point that it doesn't mean anything anymore, except as a term of abuse.

Nevertheless, there are deep, distinct problems with "modernity" as it is philosophically defined, and I'd be more encouraged if we as leftists would address these issues. Some do, but I think it needs more thorough exploration.

[Lolshevik]

I also find it interesting that none of the other self-described Trotskyist organizations with tendencies in the NPA (USec [Majority and Minority], CWI, IST, L5I) have said anything formal about it. At least, I have yet to see something from any of them. I would think that one of them would be howling about this kind of betrayal by now.

This concerns me as well. I didn't know the IST was in the NPA but I will keep watch on their sites to see if anything's posted about this. With the Communist Party's essential capitulation to the bourgeoisie and the union bureaucracy this is not the kind of 'statement' we need getting into people's heads about the NPA.

[blake 3:17]

Is there a link to Le Monde article? I took a look and maybe missed it. I would like to see it. I find the WSWS a bit hard to take.


In a May 2009 article, “Anti-productivism and anti-capitalism: new convergences,” Corcuff described his attempt to work out an alliance between the NPA and forces around the ecologist Movement of Objectors to Economic Growth (MOC). The NPA ran several regional campaigns with the MOC in the March regional elections.

Corcuff’s article denounced economic production and called for an “anti-productivist cultural revolution.” Similarly, as strike struggles developed among French auto workers, the late NPA university philosopher Daniel Bensaïd described the automobile industry as “industrially decrepit and ecologically problematic.”

The automobile industry is an ecological disaster. That seems pretty obvious. I don't see challenging productivism as anti-worker or anti-socialist. In a socialist society we could make fewer but better things and eliminate the production of all sorts of waste.

I'm unfamilar with Corcuff and the MOC but am curious now.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I don't think it's quite fair to call the article "sectarian". Yes, it's a sharp polemic against the NPA, but, let's be honest, they earned it. I read the Le Monde article and it is as bad as it sounds.

The sectarianism lies in its constant tirades against the NPA in promotion of the French SEP. If this were a one-time critique, some of the language would have been dumbed down.


I do understand that, but the disappearance of Besancenot from the media raises real questions. Moreover, it's usually the case that: a) the interviewee gets at least a day to prepare for talking to the media (unless it's breaking news, and this wasn't); and b) the person lets the party know about the interview before it happens, and especially before it goes to print.

On a practical note, should spokespersons get the opportunity to ask for scripted interviews or at least part of the interviews to be scripted?

If I were interviewed as a party spokesperson, for example, I would like to insist that the interviewer ask certain questions which would allow me to popularize some snippets, at least one of which you yourself know already:

"I even believed in a third way, I thought it was possible to put a human face on capitalism. But I was wrong." (http://links.org.au/node/1746)

"The entire Left [...] sees it that way. We want to overthrow capitalism." (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,624880,00.html)

[mossy noonmann]

http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2010/10/23/retraites-ce-mouvement-est-une-sorte-de-guerilla-sociale-durable-et-pacifique_1430079_823448.html

link here

it seems the writer from the WSWS is having a go at Corcuff from quotes with no context.

Corcoff says that in the AGs it is important for the people present to try to maintain support

The words 'ludiques' and 'inventivité' are without context and picked up on by the journo

[mossy noonmann]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGg2VUDKVJk&feature=related
this is wha i think of as ludique

[blake 3:17]

Thanks so much for the link. I read it translated, then the original, and translated again, and Corcuff sounds fine.

The WSWS are just gossipy Sparts.

The Vodafone video is pretty good.

[DaringMehring]

I also find it interesting that none of the other self-described Trotskyist organizations with tendencies in the NPA (USec [Majority and Minority], CWI, IST, L5I) have said anything formal about it. At least, I have yet to see something from any of them. I would think that one of them would be howling about this kind of betrayal by now.

Then again, perhaps not.


It is because the only revolutionary Party in France is Lutte Ouvriere, who have called for the strikes to continue and intensify. LO is the only Party composed and led by working class militants, not directed by Corcuffs.

[Martin Blank]

it seems the writer from the WSWS is having a go at Corcuff from quotes with no context.

Corcoff says that in the AGs it is important for the people present to try to maintain support

The words 'ludiques' and 'inventivité' are without context and picked up on by the journo

Corcuff may be saying that people should continue to support protest actions, but his call to accept the shutting down of the strikes and blockades by the officials of the Intersyndicale is itself a criminal betrayal. No one, especially someone considering themselves a revolutionary, should give a shit if the officials are trying to maintain support from petty-bourgeois "public opinion", especially when it is at the expense of working people. But that is exactly what Corcuff is advocating.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGg2VUDKVJk&feature=related
this is wha i think of as ludique

I've seen a lot of this kind of "playful" and "creative" bullshit over the years, and it never works. This is the same "corporate campaign" nonsense that has been tried over and over. And the result is always the same: the workers lose. You cannot fight the bosses by "playing" according to their rules. The activists might feel all warm and fuzzy after the events, but they never accomplish what they want.

[Martin Blank]

It is because the only revolutionary Party in France is Lutte Ouvriere, who have called for the strikes to continue and intensify. LO is the only Party composed and led by working class militants, not directed by Corcuffs.

Well, LO is not the only one (the Worker-Communist Initiative also has the same position and composition), but they are the larger of the two.

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

i think he oughtta get kicked out of the party.

He should be fuckign punched in the face thats what

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

The sectarianism lies in its constant tirades against the NPA in promotion of the French SEP.

There isn't a French SEP.

[Crux]

It is because the only revolutionary Party in France is Lutte Ouvriere, who have called for the strikes to continue and intensify. LO is the only Party composed and led by working class militants, not directed by Corcuffs.
No, not really. You are aware they've spoke of allying with the PS, rather than the NPA? Not very revolutionary that. Also, I might be wrong but they seem pretty whacky.

[Lolshevik]

Mayakovskij: Has the French CWI denounced this petit-bourgeois idiot? I'd like to see the NPA's USFI component do the same, but unfortunately they dissolved themselves during the NPA's founding. :( Very bad move for situations just like this especially.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

My understanding is that the CWI in France is small and is mostly located in Rouen. I haven't seen their recent statements. Lutte Ouvriere does have an odd reputation.

[Wanted Man]

It is because the only revolutionary Party in France is Lutte Ouvriere, who have called for the strikes to continue and intensify. LO is the only Party composed and led by working class militants, not directed by Corcuffs.

Yeah, they are not directed by an academic, thank God. Their leader is a real proletarian who owns three sales companies, I believe, and who sacks his secretaries once they've worked for too long because senior workers are just too expensive.

[Crux]

Mayakovskij: Has the French CWI denounced this petit-bourgeois idiot? I'd like to see the NPA's USFI component do the same, but unfortunately they dissolved themselves during the NPA's founding. :( Very bad move for situations just like this especially.
We have made a fair number of statements on the strikes, I think that's more important than debating the opinion of some academic in the NPA.

[Lolshevik]

We have made a fair number of statements on the strikes, I think that's more important than debating the opinion of some academic in the NPA.

What's with the fucking tone? I wasn't criticizing.

The CWI feels that, to win, the French workers need a vanguard party and that the NPA can be made into that. A mass revolutionary socialist party to take the struggle forward to its conclusion. Is my summary correct? If so I agree with it. And in order to forge this party, you can't have people like that in it, people who are completely opposed to the methods of working-class militancy and taking power out into the streets. It's important in the internal of the struggle to get the NPA to live up to its potential.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Corcuff may be saying that people should continue to support protest actions, but his call to accept the shutting down of the strikes and blockades by the officials of the Intersyndicale is itself a criminal betrayal. No one, especially someone considering themselves a revolutionary, should give a shit if the officials are trying to maintain support from petty-bourgeois "public opinion", especially when it is at the expense of working people. But that is exactly what Corcuff is advocating.

It's funny that I'm in the middle here. Corcuff should be publicly condemned, permanently expelled, and so on. However, should there be uncritical support for the strikes and blockades, and overrated support for the protests, since all this is occurring without a mass workers party in staunch political opposition commanding sufficient political support? Are there illusions in conning the workers into power that should be countered?

Sorry if I'm quite a mass-party-ist in this discussion, like in my anti-1968 rant on the PCF's role.

To twist Fleury's and Corcuff's words more to my liking:

He concludes that “new democracy” could emerge from “the appearance of qualified, working-class majorities in the public debate [...]”

He declares that opposition comes not from “spontaneism.” “That is finished,” he proclaims. “There aren’t spontaneous ‘crowds’/mobs, there aren’t spontaneist ‘masses,’ There are educated and organized workers who are a force for proposing working-class policies.”

[Crux]

What's with the fucking tone? I wasn't criticizing.

The CWI feels that, to win, the French workers need a vanguard party and that the NPA can be made into that. A mass revolutionary socialist party to take the struggle forward to its conclusion. Is my summary correct? If so I agree with it. And in order to forge this party, you can't have people like that in it, people who are completely opposed to the methods of working-class militancy and taking power out into the streets. It's important in the internal of the struggle to get the NPA to live up to its potential.
Well, the french comrades are very much active in the internal debate as well, but personally I think the general is more interesting than the specifics here.
What tone?

[Martin Blank]

It's funny that I'm in the middle here. Corcuff should be publicly condemned, permanently expelled, and so on. However, should there be uncritical support for the strikes and blockades, and overrated support for the protests, since all this is occurring without a mass workers party in staunch political opposition commanding sufficient political support? Are there illusions in conning the workers into power that should be countered?

From the discussions we've had with French workers on strike, involved in the blockades and protests, etc., the actions were becoming a school for learning about the importance of political organization. This is why the PS/CFDT and PCF/CGT moved fast to contain and shut down the strikes; the longer they went on, and the more these porkchoppers groveled for "negotiations" with the Gaullists, the more workers were looking past these "left" fakers. A mass revolutionary proletarian party isn't going to rise from the mist any more than it will from the failed theory of "left unity". It comes through a combination of mass struggles, consistent communist intervention and education, and workers connecting the two, in terms of their understanding and their action.

Only complete idiots actually have and foster illusions in a strike like this turning into some kind of spontaneous revolution. It sucks to say it, but these strikes were bound to go down in defeat without the workers themselves organizing for a political struggle against the the French ruling classes and their state. That would have meant telling the PS and PCF (and, by extension, the CFDT and CGT) to go fuck themselves, and working people organizing their own bodies of economic and political struggle -- workplace and strike committees at the point of production/distribution/service, and both workers' assemblies, for mass coordination of workers' political struggle, and political committees of action, to provide a political perspective through education, agitation and organization for the political fight against the exploiting and oppressing classes.

Out of those political committees of action can develop the proletarian political party (for lack of a better term) -- itself a more organic and solid basis for bringing together self-described socialists and communists than idealistic pleas for "regroupment" (or whatever the term is this week), as it is done in the process of drawing them together with the most politically aware and active sections of the working class.

You can't wish or will a mass proletarian party into existence, but you can intervene in and intersect these kind of struggles, which themselves hold the potential for such development, to try to facilitate its emergence.

[Die Neue Zeit]

From the discussions we've had with French workers on strike, involved in the blockades and protests, etc., the actions were becoming a school for learning about the importance of political organization.

How does this avoid promoting the illusion of "growing" political struggles out of economic ones, despite the fact that the strikes are about a political issue?


A mass revolutionary proletarian party isn't going to rise from the mist any more than it will from the failed theory of "left unity". It comes through a combination of mass struggles, consistent communist intervention and education, and workers connecting the two, in terms of their understanding and their action.

[...]

Out of those political committees of action can develop the proletarian political party (for lack of a better term) -- itself a more organic and solid basis for bringing together self-described socialists and communists than idealistic pleas for "regroupment" (or whatever the term is this week), as it is done in the process of drawing them together with the most politically aware and active sections of the working class.

I guess it depends on which "left unity" you refer to. I know you're referring to non-worker "left unity," but I do see more potential in working-class "left unity" as the basis for partiinost than "political committees of action," simply because without a revolutionary program there can be no revolutionary movement.


You can't wish or will a mass proletarian party into existence, but you can intervene in and intersect these kind of struggles, which themselves hold the potential for such development, to try to facilitate its emergence.

That part I can most certainly agree with.

[Martin Blank]

How does this avoid promoting the illusion of "growing" political struggles out of economic ones, despite the fact that the strikes are about a political issue?

Because there is an understanding that this development comes from interventions, past and present, by revolutionary workers who understand, first, that the class struggle is a political struggle, and, second, that this kind of fight is a political struggle taking an economic form. That kind of cart-before-horse view you're concerned about often comes from economistic elements that are able to gain the workers' attention and turn them upside down.


I guess it depends on which "left unity" you refer to. I know you're referring to non-worker "left unity," but I do see more potential in working-class "left unity" as the basis for partiinost than "political committees of action," simply because without a revolutionary program there can be no revolutionary movement.

I don't think you're getting it. A political committee of action (a term I made up on the fly when I wrote that post -- there might be a better term) would be the vehicle for building that party-ism by drawing those working-class revolutionary elements together and, in effect, forcing them to look each other in the eye and explain, to each other and to workers themselves, why their individual doctrines and hangups are important to actually building a proletarian party, why they could not work together in a common political framework unless this or that historical, ideological or tactical position is accepted by all.

Naturally, every organization and tendency that would have workers in these committees would have their programs in it. And I would expect that successive gatherings of this committee would quickly hammer out a program that takes the best elements from them all -- if all of them have good elements, that is. There may end up being more than a few of these committees that are formed, merge, divide and re-form throughout current and future struggles, but each emergence will develop a future for itself, if it is done right, until there is no longer a real need for them.


That part I can most certainly agree with.

I appreciate that. The real issue, however, is how to translate a relatively abstract statement like I made into something that is real and productive.

[Martin Blank]

Well, the french comrades are very much active in the internal debate as well, but personally I think the general is more interesting than the specifics here.

Sorry, comrade, I have to call you out on this one. I'm not looking for a fight here, but I really think this is a rotten position to take.

Gauche Revolutionnaire is your section in France. It came out of the LCR's youth group and then reunited with the LCR to help form the NPA. Thus, the NPA is your organization's party of choice in France. What it does reflects on you as much as any other tendency within it. So, when Corcuff, who is known as a leading "philosopher" in the NPA, says these things, it does reflect on GR and the CWI. And staying silent conveys a message that your comrades have no problem with what he said (as I recall, the NPA is not "democratic centralist", so it's not like you have to worry about disciplinary action).

This is only amplified by that fact that Corcuff's views were not only in the "newspaper of record" for France, but that Corcuff's blog post on the same subject, in which he expands on his views (and makes them even worse than what Le Monde reported), is featured on the front page of the NPA's website! For all intents and purposes, Corcuff's view appears to be that of the party leadership as well.

Yes, I know that writing about the strike itself is important, but while the GR is doing that, this guy is representing your organization's party of choice in the media and saying that workers should agree to go back to work, end the strikes and blockades, and limit themselves to bullshit publicity stunts. I would take that seriously. It reflects on every person trying to promote the NPA among workers ... and those connected to them in other countries, since the silence on Corcuff's views will appear to be agreement or, at least, acceptance.

And similar can be said for the other tendencies in the NPA: the IST, FI-USec and L5I, as well as the other unaffiliated Trotskyist groups that joined, the ex-Promethee, ex-L'Etencille, and ex-Voix du Travailleurs.

[Kléber]

The SEP has the cancer of post-modernism in some of their theory.
The SEP has only ever mentioned postmodernism (http://www.google.com/search?q=postmodern+site%3Awww.wsws.org&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) in order to trash it.

[Crux]

Sorry, comrade, I have to call you out on this one. I'm not looking for a fight here, but I really think this is a rotten position to take.

Gauche Revolutionnaire is your section in France. It came out of the LCR's youth group and then reunited with the LCR to help form the NPA. Thus, the NPA is your organization's party of choice in France. What it does reflects on you as much as any other tendency within it. So, when Corcuff, who is known as a leading "philosopher" in the NPA, says these things, it does reflect on GR and the CWI. And staying silent conveys a message that your comrades have no problem with what he said (as I recall, the NPA is not "democratic centralist", so it's not like you have to worry about disciplinary action).

This is only amplified by that fact that Corcuff's views were not only in the "newspaper of record" for France, but that Corcuff's blog post on the same subject, in which he expands on his views (and makes them even worse than what Le Monde reported), is featured on the front page of the NPA's website! For all intents and purposes, Corcuff's view appears to be that of the party leadership as well.

Yes, I know that writing about the strike itself is important, but while the GR is doing that, this guy is representing your organization's party of choice in the media and saying that workers should agree to go back to work, end the strikes and blockades, and limit themselves to bullshit publicity stunts. I would take that seriously. It reflects on every person trying to promote the NPA among workers ... and those connected to them in other countries, since the silence on Corcuff's views will appear to be agreement or, at least, acceptance.

And similar can be said for the other tendencies in the NPA: the IST, FI-USec and L5I, as well as the other unaffiliated Trotskyist groups that joined, the ex-Promethee, ex-L'Etencille, and ex-Voix du Travailleurs.
Well, the point I was trying to push, there is an internal debate, an internal opposition. However I didn't find any particular address towards Corcuff, but then again the problems for the NPA are a bit deeper.

[DaringMehring]

No, not really. You are aware they've spoke of allying with the PS, rather than the NPA? Not very revolutionary that. Also, I might be wrong but they seem pretty whacky.

You're wrong they'd never "ally" with the PS. Even in purely electoral games, they only ever linked with other French Trotskyists once out of several decades. Their whole strategy is political independence. They're revolutionary - just look at who is doing what in this fight. LO is calling for the strikes to intensify and deepen, and even saying in this context, the only solution is revolution.

Don't let the fact that you sympathize with other Trots, maybe those who dissolved themselves into the NPA, blind you to who is reformist and who is revolutionary.

The "whacky" stuff --- yeah, most real communists seem "whacky" to almost everyone. That's just some old bourgeois slander.

[DaringMehring]

Yeah, they are not directed by an academic, thank God. Their leader is a real proletarian who owns three sales companies, I believe, and who sacks his secretaries once they've worked for too long because senior workers are just too expensive.

And you know this how? Cause you read it in the bourgeois press? The fact is, LO has a collective leadership structure, and there is no "leader." They keep secrecy about the identities of leading members, for obvious reasons. Ie, they actually are revolutionary and a threat to capitalism and the state, not reformist.

The bourgeois press tried to "expose" some "guru" because LO was taking too many votes in elections (so PS etc. decided to come down on the them). In fact, they printed a number of exaggerations and slanders about something they knew next to nothing about. It is pathetic to believe what these bourgeois liars say, about the largest and main political organization, that believes the strikes should intensify, says it, and also says, the strikes will be insufficient, unless they lead down the road to revolutionary socialism. I guess you'd believe that Lenin and Trotsky were a German spies and the Bolsheviks were all their puppets, because the Russian press said it?

[Crux]

You're wrong they'd never "ally" with the PS. Even in purely electoral games, they only ever linked with other French Trotskyists once out of several decades. Their whole strategy is political independence. They're revolutionary - just look at who is doing what in this fight. LO is calling for the strikes to intensify and deepen, and even saying in this context, the only solution is revolution.

Don't let the fact that you sympathize with other Trots, maybe those who dissolved themselves into the NPA, blind you to who is reformist and who is revolutionary.

The "whacky" stuff --- yeah, most real communists seem "whacky" to almost everyone. That's just some old bourgeois slander.
Really?
À ces élections LO présente donc près de 5000 candidats sur 188 listes différentes (contre 128 en 2001)[10] (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutte_ouvri%C3%A8re#cite_note-9). Dans 70 villes les militants de Lutte Ouvrière participent à des listes d'union, principalement conduites par le Parti communiste (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parti_communiste_fran%C3%A7ais) (38 listes) ou le Parti socialiste (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parti_socialiste_%28France%29) (26 listes), sur des listes qui comportent parfois d'autres partis comme la LCR (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligue_communiste_r%C3%A9volutionnaire), les Verts (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Verts_%28France%29), le MRC (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouvement_r%C3%A9publicain_et_citoyen), le PT (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parti_des_travailleurs_%28France%29) ou le PRG (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parti_radical_de_gauche). LO présente par ailleurs des listes indépendantes dans 118 villes, là où aucun accord n'a pu être conclu[11] (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutte_ouvri%C3%A8re#cite_note-10).
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutte_ouvri%C3%A8re#.C3.89lections
My bold. You don't need to know french to understand what it says, I hope.

No I think it was wrong, but expected of the LCR to dissolve themselves.
I am a member of the CWI, thus my sympathies are with Gauche révolutionnaire.
Whacky stuff like forbidding members of the party to have children without the permission of the party. Oh and just some additional whackyness: http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/death-of-lutte-ouvriere-founder-hidden-for-a-year/

[DaringMehring]

Really?
À ces élections LO présente donc près de 5000 candidats sur 188 listes différentes (contre 128 en 2001)[10] (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutte_ouvri%C3%A8re#cite_note-9). Dans 70 villes les militants de Lutte Ouvrière participent à des listes d'union, principalement conduites par le Parti communiste (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parti_communiste_fran%C3%A7ais) (38 listes) ou le Parti socialiste (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parti_socialiste_%28France%29) (26 listes), sur des listes qui comportent parfois d'autres partis comme la LCR (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligue_communiste_r%C3%A9volutionnaire), les Verts (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Verts_%28France%29), le MRC (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouvement_r%C3%A9publicain_et_citoyen), le PT (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parti_des_travailleurs_%28France%29) ou le PRG (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parti_radical_de_gauche). LO présente par ailleurs des listes indépendantes dans 118 villes, là où aucun accord n'a pu être conclu[11] (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutte_ouvri%C3%A8re#cite_note-10).
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutte_ouvri%C3%A8re#.C3.89lections
My bold. You don't need to know french to understand what it says, I hope.

No I think it was wrong, but expected of the LCR to dissolve themselves.
I am a member of the CWI, thus my sympathies are with Gauche révolutionnaire.
Whacky stuff like forbidding members of the party to have children without the permission of the party. Oh and just some additional whackyness: http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/death-of-lutte-ouvriere-founder-hidden-for-a-year/

Yes you are pointing out that in ONE election out of several decades they tried a tactic of cross-listing, which was controversial and ABANDONED. Despite pressure to work with the LCR or PCF or PS.

You talk about for instance the death of Hardy. So what? They're supposed to announce that this guy is dead? They try to keep their leadership secret from non-members. The whole Hardy thing is based on bourgeois snooping and sensationalism, they have no need to feed it.

Concentrate on politics --- look at what they have done here, or in the Guadeloupe+Martinique general strikes, where they led. Look at what they say about revolution. Look at their membership which is all working class militants and excludes petitbourgeois. You call them "whacky" I call them modern day Bolsheviks.

[Crux]

Yes you are pointing out that in ONE election out of several decades they tried a tactic of cross-listing, which was controversial and ABANDONED.
Prove it.


You talk about for instance the death of Hardy. So what? They're supposed to announce that this guy is dead? They try to keep their leadership secret from non-members. The whole Hardy thing is based on bourgeois snooping and sensationalism, they have no need to feed it. That's of course possible. But it doesn't go without raising questions.


Concentrate on politics --- look at what they have done here, or in the Guadeloupe+Martinique general strikes, where they led. Look at what they say about revolution. Look at their membership which is all working class militants and excludes petitbourgeois. You call them "whacky" I call them modern day Bolsheviks.
Really, I thought it was the LKP that led the movement.
Yes, they seem to have a lot of restrictions on their membership.

[DaringMehring]

Prove it.

First of all, you have to know their attitude towards elections: "A l’inverse de tant d’autres partis politiques, Lutte Ouvrière n’a pas pour but d’être une simple machine électorale servant uniquement à assurer une carrière à des notables ou à des politiciens professionnels."

Contrary to so many other political parties, Lutte Ouvriere is not aimed at being a simple electoral machine serving only for assuring a career to notables or professional politicians.

"Même si Lutte Ouvrière remportait un grand nombre de suffrages populaires, son programme ne pourrait pas être appliqué uniquement au travers des mandats électifs. Car fondamentalement, derrière la façade du régime parlementaire se dresse la dictature des grandes entreprises capitalistes et de leurs nombreux serviteurs - hauts fonctionnaires non-élus, armée, police, prisons - qui constituent l’ossature de l’appareil d’État de la bourgeoisie."

Even if Lutte Ouvriere carried off a big number of elections, its program could not be only applied through the elective mandates. Because basically, behind the facade of parliament stands the dictatorship of the big capitalist firms and of their numerous attendants - non-elected senior civil servants, army, police, prisons - which constitute the bones of the State apparatus of the bourgeoisie.

Le programme de transformation sociale ne peut pas être mis en application dans le cadre des institutions d’une société dominée par la grande bourgeoisie et son État. Il ne pourra commencer à s’appliquer que lorsque les classes laborieuses mises en mouvement en arriveront à la volonté de contester la direction de l’économie à la bourgeoisie. C’est-à-dire quand la lutte quittera le terrain du parlementarisme, que la classe ouvrière s’organisera démocratiquement en créant ses propres organes de représentation et que la révolution ouvrière commencera.

The program of social transformation cannot be applied as part of the institutions of a society dominated by the big bourgeoisie and its State. It cannot even begin until the laboring classes get in in motion to contest the direction of economy by the bourgeoisie. That is to say when conflict will leave the ground of parliamentarism, the working class will get organized democratically by creating its own organs of representation and the working revolution will begin.

So you can see, their attitude towards the electoral game. Do you really think, they make their policy to sell themselves out, in order to get some MEP or other meaningless "gain"?

I know from talking to their people, that they value elections only as a tool, and do not find cross-listing with the PS, PCF, etc. useful. Just look at their history in which they were independent of any cross-listing whatsoever, with only one exception (try everything once, to figure out where it can get you).



That's of course possible. But it doesn't go without raising questions.


If as you say, it's possible (even, completely logical) then why would you want to raise those questions... they are questions of bourgeoisie attacking communists, attacking the main revolutionary formation in France.



Really, I thought it was the LKP that led the movement.
As the general strike went on, the workers needed organization to be able to distribute goods, keep the strike going, etc. They naturally looked for someone who was prepared for that sort of thing, and that was LO. By the end, both islands were being directed in large part by LO militants. And the strike ended in success.


Yes, they seem to have a lot of restrictions on their membership.
People said that about the Bolsheviks in 1903.

[Crux]

I recognize them as one of the radical groupings in France, although I am hardly as positive as describing them as the french bolsheviks. I think their attitude to NPA is wrong and particularly interesting given that they opened up towards joint local lists even with PS, The Greens etc. There are ex-LO-tendencies in the NPA now working on the left of the NPA.

"In the local elections in 2008, Lutte Ouvrière broke with tradition by joining the Socialist Party-led slates by the first round of the elections in a number of towns, preferring this tactic to the more usual option of cooperating with other far left groups to run a joint election campaign. Because an organized minority faction supported some lists running against lists supported by the party leadership, Lutte Ouvrière suspended the faction from the organization. The position of the faction will be finally decided at the next national conference, but the faction is expected to be expelled. The faction has agreed to take part in the initial stages of the New Anticapitalist Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Anticapitalist_Party) set up by the LCR with others, though this may not be a long-term strategy, with one member explaining it as "foot in both camps" strategy.[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutte_Ouvri%C3%A8re#cite_note-1)"

[DaringMehring]

The LO rightly criticized the NPA as liquidation on the part of the LCR. Their attitude towards it is to not participate in it. There is no way they will let themselves be connected to the Corcuffs of the world.

Their overall strategy is very patient. Slow building, but real building. They have gone from nothing in the 70s, to a party of thousands with many sympathizers, who can actually effect events on the ground, and pulls in 2-4% in elections. They are rightly afraid to throw away their patient building, on some fantastic liquidationist alliance with the petitbourgeoisie.

I mean as you say, you only have to cross-list once for 30 years of solid independence to get polluted in the public mind.

[Crux]

It is telling that the oppositional fraction towards joint lists with the PS are those that joined the NPA. Yes LCR liquidated themselfes, that should be criticized, but that does not equal standing outside the project for a new party. After all the LO has been discussing a fusion with the LCR for years.

[Kiev Communard]

I don't think that "LO vs. NPA" approach will get us to anywhere in discussing current political situation in France. The fact remains the fact, however: too many academics in NPA an OTHER left-wing parties of France remain enamored with postmodernist ideology, which is a dead end from the point of view of the necessity of developing new revolutionary theory and praxis.

[mossy noonmann]

here is the corcuff blog
http://www.mediapart.fr/club/blog/philippe-corcuff/181010/pour-une-guerilla-sociale-durable-et-pacifique

could anyone tell me which bits they think are really bad?

And what was the problem with the article in le monde?

[DaringMehring]

It is telling that the oppositional fraction towards joint lists with the PS are those that joined the NPA. Yes LCR liquidated themselfes, that should be criticized, but that does not equal standing outside the project for a new party. After all the LO has been discussing a fusion with the LCR for years.

A new party -- but a new party on what basis? We all know the shortcomings of NPA's program (not revolutionary). Why should LO jump to join up with such a formation? Just because it exists? Just look at how these strikes are playing out, look at what Corcuff says versus what Nathalie Arthaud (LO spokesperson) says.

LO discussed fusion with LCR, when both were revolutionary Trotskyist parties. Even then, it didn't get too far. Now, there is NPA, which is not revolutionary, not Trotskyist, not communist. There is no reason for LO to throw away their long, steady building, on something like that. It would be disrespectful to the comrades who may have spend decades fighting for LO, and then died, to trash the fruits of their discipline for a petitbourgeois project.