France's Election Campaign
Reveals Deepening Political Crisis
By Dimitris Fotis
PARIS, MARCH 2007 — One of the most effective tricks used by the French ruling class to advance its class interests consists in "comparing" France to the rest of the Western world. In face of purportedly prosperous, debt-free, socially-peaceful and confident countries such as Canada, Ireland or Denmark, France makes figure of a stagnating, crisis-ridden, out-of-breath counterpart. Reforming the archaism of the Fifth Republic regime [1] and abolishing the burdens weighing on business is viewed as an urgent necessity by the different bourgeois parties. A break with the past 26 years of French politics has thus become the cardinal point of government parties in this campaign.
In this way, the current presidential election campaign reflects pressures on the capitalist class that that stem from its political crisis.
The April 2002 presidential election was nothing less than an earthquake that struck the bourgeois leaders. It reflected the wide distance separating the people from those claiming to be its democratic representatives. The two main candidates, Jacques Chirac of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) and Lionel Jospin of the Socialist Party (SP), gathered only 37% of the first round votes. [2] The traditional, right and left two-party system has moreover been put into question by the breakthrough of the extreme-rightist Front National (FN). With 16.9% of the votes, it came second on the first round, ahead of Jospin whose 16.2% did not permit him to pass to the second round. The incapacity of the ruling political forces to gain the confidence of the masses is feeding the extreme right, while revolutionary perspectives gain momentum as well.
Union pour un Mouvement Populaire
The UMP candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, campaigns under the slogan "Together, everything becomes possible". Even though he held key ministries at various times during the past five years of Chirac's presidency, his main campaign theme is his so-called "quiet rupture" ("rupture tranquille") . Thoroughly critical of the Chiracian old guard, Sarkozy represents the best chance for the bourgeoisie to push through unpopular reforms and rid itself of the nation-embracing Gaullist shackles of the political right. Several commentators refer to him as the French equivalent of Margaret Thatcher.
This is particularly clear in the UMP's program on economic issues. It defends reduction of public spending and the number of public service workers, weakening the working contracts of wage earners, abolition of the 35-hour work week, extension of working years before retirement, reducing taxation on business, and increased indirect taxation.
Sarkozy also wants to clamp down on "illegal" immigration and reduce immigration flows. These measures, which he has already put into practice as Minister of the Interior, are valuable credentials for the extreme right electorate. This is notably illustrated by Sarkozy's FN-borrowed formula, "La France, aimez-la ou quittez-la" ("France: love her or leave her"), aimed to intimidate the foreign-born and the cultural minorities.
These rightist tendencies are counterbalanced by a claim to represent social justice, with references to the historic figures of French social democracy like Jean Jaurès and Léon Blum. Sarkozy defends the adoption of affirmative action measures in workplaces and higher education for French citizens that are Black or of North African origin. All things considered, Sarkozy claims to be the man whose firm hand can get things done and thus overcome the moral crisis of France's ruling class.
Socialist Party and UDF
The Socialist Party promotes a social-democratic line, with its slogan "Plus juste, la France sera plus forte" ("A more just France will be a stronger France"). The SP's candidate, Ségolène Royal, is trying to capture the anti-Sarkozy vote by portraying herself as the only left alternative. But Royal's campaign, just like Sarkozy's, reflects the will of the French bourgeoisie to change. Commentators were shocked at the beginning of the campaign when she invoked the idea of civilian juries to control elected representatives. Even though Royal never detailed the exact powers of such institutions, it nevertheless registers an implicit acknowledgement by the Socialists that the Fifth Republic's fate is coming to an end.
On many political questions, the SP tries to portray itself as the only alternative to the projects of the right-wingers. Thus, it opposes Sarkozy's campaign against public spending. Among the controversial measures of the SP's campaign, Royal wishes to abolish the school districts which assure a minimum of equality in public education through compulsory inscription in the household's residency area. Another debated measure is the confinement of delinquent youth to military re-education centres, which come down to official boot camps. All in all, Royal's campaign is not centred on the promotion of a left-wing line; it is mainly relying on her self-proclaimed "new way of doing politics"-- more transparency, less party politics and petty rationalizations, closer attention to citizens' expectations.
The same can also be said for François Bayrou (Union pour la Démocratie Française – UDF) who has gained a hearing by promoting a centrist political program. He says that the left-right divide has been outlived and has lost its meaning. The main idea that Bayrou defends is to unite the "most talented" into a national union government, reuniting left and right, but whose core would be centrist-made. Even though his political record has seen him numerous times in different right-wing governments, Bayrou has succeeded to date in rallying dissatisfied UMP voters and, especially, Socialist voters. A second-tour Bayrou-Sarkozy or Bayrou-Royal is thus not excluded.
Front National
Alongside the UMP and the SP, the extreme right-wing Front National represents another response to the political crisis of the ruling class. Jean-Marie Le Pen campaigns to end immigration, for expulsion of the undocumented ("sans-papiers"), and a "French first" policy for access to social security, unemployment insurance and job search programs. The FN also argues for a tougher police force and a toughening of the courts to fight against youth delinquency and insecurity, which he portrays as a by-product of immigration.
The FN's entire political line is marked by its reactionary racism. The party's long history of anti-Semitism burst out in public in September 1987, when Le Pen argued on public television that the gas chambers were after all a "detail" in the history of the Second World War. Similarly, Bruno Gollnisch, member of the FN leadership and history professor, has been expelled from the History Department of the University of Lyon in 2004 for his revisionist views on the Holocaust. More recently, Le Pen argued in January 2005 that the Nazi Occupation "had not been particularly inhumane" in France.
Yet, the party's capacity to gain a hearing among workers remains intact in face of the deepening social divide, the political crisis of the ruling class and the absence of a clear class struggle alternative. It thus registers partial but sustained success in its nationalist campaign against the European Union, including the euro currency and the European Central Bank. Le Pen's latest novelty has been to denounce the short-term myopia and the destabilizing effects of financial capitalism. Last but not least, the FN campaign is trying to cast off its "extremist" image, dressing up instead in clothes of bourgeois respectability.
The Far Left
Beyond the capitalist parties, there are some formations that allow a working class voice to be heard in this electoral race. The Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) candidate, Olivier Besancenot, got 4.25% of the first round vote in the election of April 2002, and Lutte Ouvrière's Arlette Laguiller (LO) took 5.72%. The two candidates use their present campaign to reach out and broaden their hearing in the population. Both are fighting against the capitalist offensive on workers' living and working standards. Unemployment remains unresolved for millions whereas big business pocketed public aid programs to hire more. They also denounce the fiscal policy put forth by capitalist parties, which puts more and more financial pressure on low and medium-income households, and point to the need for a more progressive scale of taxation.
Both candidates had trouble in obtaining the 500 mayors' signatures necessary to validate their ballot status. The Fifth Republic constitution considers this procedure necessary to eliminate the "non-serious" candidates from running. But what is often depicted as a constitutional clause to ensure the good functioning of electoral democracy turns out to be, especially now, a significant obstacle for small parties' efforts to run. All of them challenged the locking-up policy of the main parties at the National Assembly (UMP, SP, UDF, PCF). For example, François Hollande, Secretary General of the SP, sent a letter in the early stages of the campaign to Socialist mayors to warn them against lending their signatures to left candidates. The participation of too many candidates, particularly on the left, is cited as a cause of the FN breakthrough in 2002.
LO and LCR militants explain that the only way to push back the profit-makers' offensive is massive organized class struggle, in the fashion of the mobilizations of 1995 and 2006. And they are among the only parties in the presidential race that fight alongside militants all-year round for more public housing and regularizing the status of the sans-papiers, or alongside strikers and unemployed engaged in fights against the bosses.
Communist Party
As for the Communist Party (PCF), its early campaign has centred on establishing its leadership of the left-wing forces among the heterogeneous "No camp" that won the May 2005 referendum on the European constitutional treaty. [3] The PCF's political orientation consists of organizing a wide "anti-liberal" popular front that would take a significant part of the vote on the first round. It claims that such a result would create an alliance in a "plural left" government with the Socialists that could stop the "neoliberal" drive against working people.
While this political orientation enjoys undeniable support among militants of different far-left currents, the failure to date to bring about such a new "Popular Front" has deeper causes. The main question posed is nothing less than reform or revolution. Unlike the United States or Canada, state power has been in the hands of labor-oriented parties in France in the past: the latest episode followed the May 1981 elections that brought to the presidency Socialist François Mitterand. A SP-PCF coalition then formed the government during the first years of the Mitterand presidency. What was believed by the majority of the people to be the beginning of a new era turned out to be a nightmare. It was during the 1980s and the first half of the 90s that the barons of industry and finance carried out an unrelenting offensive on labor.
So bad were the assaults presided over by an SP government that Chirac won the presidency in 1995 by campaigning against the "fracture sociale" (social divide) that was deepened during the term of his "Socialist" predecessor. Likewise, the Jospin government of 1997-2002 registered the failure of another "plural left" coalition to put a stop to the widening social gap and regain the confidence of the popular classes.
Where does all that leave us in 2007? The picture seems clear -- as in April 2002, demoralization and isolation continue to plague large sections of the toiling majority. Some even consider voting FN only to "put an end to all of it", thinking that the "system" will explode that way. Moreover, the feeling that there is no alternative to capitalism and its horrors, of liberal or social-democratic flavour, has gained ground and has oriented people to find individual solutions to their problems.
If there are any lessons to be learned from history, class struggle militants should fight against the "plural left" line of the PCF, even if it appears appealing at first glance. Experience shows that each time that labor parties tried to "manage" capitalism while trying to reform it, the consequences for workers were disastrous and deep. This does not mean that a reformist left-wing government cannot be supported by militants. Conditional support with no blank cheque to the SP and PCF leaders seems a more sound approach to the question. As for accusations of sectarianism, the claim is mistaken. It is no surprise that a compromise between the PCF, LO and LCR was sought but not possible. The LCR leadership thought it was possible to collaborate with reformist forces who were in the No camp during the 2005 referendum campaign, but this ended with no results. In the eyes of LO, the No camp could not furnish the basis of a lasting political collaboration among organizations with deeply differing orientations.
The Unmentioned Issue: French Imperialism
The great unmentioned issue in the present election is French foreign policy. And yet France's role in the world is far from passive. Until now, France has played a leading role among Western imperialist powers in mounting pressure on Iran's efforts to build civil nuclear-power plants. French troops are participating in the occupation of Afghanistan (1100 troops), Lebanon (1650 troops) and Haiti (40 troops). They are also stationed in neo-colonial African countries whose regimes are near collapse, including war-torn Ivory Coast (3350 troops), Chad (1100 troops), and the Central-African Republic (220 troops).
The absence of any questioning of foreign policy in the presidential campaign reveals two features of French politics. First of all, most of the ruling class representatives and ideologues are united behind the national flag over international questions. Everyone agrees for example on the "wisdom" of the Chirac-Villepin position of non-intervention in the war in Iraq. Similarly, there is no doubt in ruling circles that foreign policy worldwide must seek to strengthen French "national interests."
But the absence of any major debate around these questions also reflects the accomplishments of the mass media. Their year-round propaganda campaign to legitimize French imperialist interventions, makes it seem almost natural to most working people that during the presidential race these issues do not come up — since "everyone agrees" why bother with these foreign issues? Even among workers' parties there is alignment with the silence of the capitalist parties on these matters.
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Working people do not expect much from the coming elections. Whatever the results, the vital questions for the toiling majority can be expected to remain unresolved. Housing problems, mass unemployment, a dwindling purchasing power, erosion of social programs, lengthening of the workweek and speedup of production will continue to be the lot of millions, as they have for the past three decades.
But this political equilibrium has many chances to change in the near future, under the whip of deepening ruling class attacks. During the winter of 1995-96, a vast movement of public workers blocked government attempts to dismantle part of their social benefits. Likewise, in the spring of 2006, millions followed the students into the streets to protest the Villepin government's attempt to impose a new hiring contract for youth that would have sharply reduced rights on the job, including protection against unjust firings.
Bourgeois spokesmen argue that these mass movements show why France is lagging behind the neo-liberal standards of the day. Their class prejudices prevent them from seeing that during these periods of social upheaval, those who normally have no say in public affairs burst out official channels and intervene directly in the politics of the Republic. The protests in France, like the massive politicization of the toiling millions in Bolivia, Venezuela and Mexico, provide a vivid example of what can legitimately be called "real politics".
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Notes:
[1] The Fifth Republic is the fifth and current republican constitution of France. It was introduced in 1958.
[2] The presidential election in France takes place in two rounds. The top two finishers in the first round square off in a second round..
[3] In May 2005, a majority of French voters rejected proposed acceptance of a new European constitution to replace the French constitution. The result was a blow to the efforts of French rulers to "modernize" their constitution and bring it more into line with their European Union allies.
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SOCIALIST VOICE
Editors: Roger Annis, John Riddell
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