Five years of Macron’s presidency. Five years that seem to have been an eternity of anti-social attacks, police brutality, divide-and-rule tactics, and precarious jobs. When such a large section of society sees no prospect of a bright future, it paves the way for a new rise in far-right ideas.
Five years also of waves of massive mobilisations against policies that serve the ruling class — the massive strike of education staff being the latest example.
The campaign of Mélenchon and France Insoumise can be used to stimulate a movement of struggle with anti-capitalist perspectives. A victory for his candidature would be a springboard to put immediate changes on the agenda, and popularize the need for a change of society.
5 years of Macron have boosted the far-right
After 5 years of Macron, the anger that was used by Marine Le Pen in 2017 to gain a good electoral result is stronger and more widespread today. The Macron years have accelerated inequality: the 5 richest families have doubled their wealth; they now own as much as the poorest 40% of the population. And this trend has accelerated during the pandemic. According to Oxfam, from March 2020 to October 2021, the wealth of French billionaires increased by 86%. With the additional €236 billion earned in 19 months by these billionaires, we could quadruple the budget of the public hospitals, or distribute a check for €3,500 to each person in France… But the population still get nothing. On the contrary, there is growing misery. 10 million people live below the poverty line, 8 million rely on food aid, 12 million are in a situation of energy insecurity…
Starting his presidency like a kamikaze, Macron launched a Thatcherite policy of attacks on trade union rights, and a multitude of austerity measures, polarising society to the maximum in order to create division to avoid a unified protest, a policy accompanied by heightened security and an authoritarian turn. This meant a big increase in state racism, with brutal repression, police violence against trade union movements, and numerous social struggles as well as against youth, especially those of immigrant origin. This happened in the context where the traditional ‘left’ parties had just spent 5 years in power — supported by most trade union leaderships — and was no longer seen as a credible alternative
All this left more room for the populist right and far-right forces to gain confidence and their ideas to gain traction. The meteoric rise of Éric Zemmour is a further illustration of the failure of the 2017 ‘vote Macron to block the far right’ strategy.
It is not surprising that the right wing and far right parties are leading in the polls, with Macron’s “La République En Marche!” (LREM) in first place, ahead of Le Pen’s “Rassemblement National”, (RM and formerly Front National), Zemmour’s “Reconquête”, and Pécresse’s “Les Républicains). The latter also using Islamophobic and anti-immigration rhetoric.
In mid-February, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of “France Insoumise” (FI) was in 5th position, not far behind the leading quartet and therefore from a possible 2nd round. He scores around 11–12% in the polls, the same level as 5 years ago at the end of February 2017. In the elections two months later, he eventually gained almost 20% of the votes, close to winning access to the 2nd round.
Mélenchon and France Insoumise
Mélenchon and FI are however confronted with a different situation than in the last presidential elections. For the first time since 2007, the Communist Party (PCF) has decided to stand a candidate and not support Mélenchon. Most importantly, the FI is no longer a novelty, and it is not easy to reproduce the dynamics of the 2017 campaign, after a period in the National Assembly during which the FI alternated both very good and good positions, with the not so good.
The first months of their participation were exemplary, using their position in parliament to stimulate the social struggle against the first anti-social and anti-worker measures. That was something the leaderships of the main trade unions and the traditional left refused to do, as they only had as a perspective a return of the Parti Socialiste (PS) to the helm. These initiatives even pushed some trade unions to organize days of strikes and actions, but unfortunately without much follow-up, despite the great potential existing for a massive generalized struggle. Later though, FI unfortunately turned to concentrate more on its parliamentary opposition work, with proposals for a break with its past. Although it continued to support struggles, it took fewer initiatives to stimulate and organise them.
Our support for the France Insoumise approach is not without criticism, far from it. But, as in 2017, the proposals formulated in the program “L’Avenir en commun” (“Common future”) go in the right direction. Together with the dynamics of the campaign, they contribute to the necessary reawakening of political consciousness of workers and youth after years of disgust, disillusionment, and despair. They have the potential to reach out to sections of society that have turned away from politics for years.
However, this potential is handicapped by the FI’s lack of internal democracy and by certain dubious positions concerning foreign policy and its sovereignist orientation. At the local level, it supports — or even participates in — alliances with the Greens, or even with the PS, as in the cities of Grenoble and Montreuil. These parties are up to their necks in the anti-social policies of the last decades. They are more part of the problem than the solution.
The ‘Common Future’ program
There are many good and very good demands in the ‘Common Future’ programme, but it is impossible to analyse it fully here. Here are some of the measures proposed:
– A collective reduction of working time, i.e. strictly applying the 35h and the 32h in arduous jobs, and opening negotiations to generalise the 32h; the introduction of retirement at 60; the minimum wage (SMIC) at 1400€ and no pension below the SMIC.
– A job guarantee: any long-term unemployed person who wants a job must be offered a job by the state that corresponds to his/her qualifications, close to home and for tasks that the market refuses to perform and that we need, such as in the field of care, linked to ecological planning.
– A monthly allowance of 1063€ for students, so that they can be financially independent from their families and devote themselves fully to their studies, without having to work in sometimes miserable conditions;
– A universal rent guarantee; a ban on rental evictions without public rehousing; rent controls and reductions in cities; the construction of 1 million public housing units over 5 years, in accordance with ecological standards; a 30% quota of social housing in cities; the requisition of empty housing.
– Measures to improve salaries and status and to hire additional staff in health and education, as well as the construction of infrastructure and the mobilisation of equipment and materials in these sectors; the creation of at least 210,000 jobs for elderly care; the reimbursement of 100% of the costs of prescribed health care; the total free provision of public schools for both canteen and materials.
– Faced with the climate challenge, FI takes up its intelligent idea of “ecological planning” with, in particular, a plan for 200 billion euros of ecologically and socially useful investments, to get out of carbon energies and nuclear power, while ensuring the retraining of workers and making massive investments in the sectors concerned, with the objective of 100% renewable energies by 2050 at the latest — a plan that provides for the renationalisation of the energy companies EDF and Engie and the massive creation of jobs.
– Rebuilding the public transport and public services network, especially in rural departments and working-class neighbourhoods, to guarantee access to basic public services within 30 minutes of one’s home.
– Convene a Constituent Assembly to move towards a 6th Republic; introduce a Citizens’ Initiative Referendum and the right to vote at 16.
These are only a few elements of the program, to which we must add specific measures for the overseas territories, a plan for people with disabilities, a plan to combat discrimination and racist, sexist and LGBTI violence, the nationalisation of the railway company SNCF, motorways and strategic airports, the exit from NATO, etc., and measures for an immediate response to the social emergency, with a freeze on the prices of basic necessities, the first cubic metre of water free of charge, a zero homelessness plan, etc.
It is an ambitious program, which attempts to improve the daily life and the future of workers and young people, to correspond to the real needs in society while remaining within the framework of the capitalist system, but with elements of rupture with the functioning of the system. While we give critical but constructive support to this program as it does not go far enough, we have to stress that the measures it contains and the campaign surrounding it allow for anti-capitalist conclusions and an open discussion on the kind of societal alternative needed.
For a plan to nationalise key sectors
To the question of how to finance this program, FI answers: “Financing is not a problem. The question we have to ask ourselves first is what we need.” That said, the financing project is mainly based on taxes, against the richest of course: on dividends; on inheritances, with a requisition of inheritance beyond 12 million euros; on the highest incomes, with the re-establishment and strengthening of the solidarity tax on wealth, including a climate component aimed at taxing big polluters; making income tax more progressive with a scale of 14 brackets, compared to 5 today. Taxing the rich is of course important, but we know their capacity for tax optimisation, legal or not. Such a project remains insufficient to finance a program that really responds to needs, especially as the ruling class will retaliate by fleeing capital.
The concept of nationalisation is stressed several times in Mélenchon’s programme, but only partially and timidly: it never concerns an entire sector, only key companies or the creation of ‘public poles’. We need democratic management and control of production by workers and the community in all key sectors of the economy. The nationalisation of the entire financial sector and the creation of a single public credit institution is the only way to ensure control of capital and prevent capitalists from controlling investment.
The key sectors (banking, finance, energy, telecoms, steel, petrochemicals,…) must be nationalised in their entirety, without compensation except on the basis of proven need, and must be placed under the democratic control and management of the workers and the community. This is the only effective response to the threats of relocations that will come from many big bosses.
For a change of system, for a democratic socialist society
The project for a 6th Republic aimed at abolishing the current system has the merit of calling into question the institutions that protect the domination of the capitalist class. A series of measures attached to it in this program point towards a break with the system, without however clearly daring to point to this necessity.
We need to go further. Why not apply this excellent project of ecological planning to the economy itself? Democratic economic planning would allow production to be directed towards what is necessary, towards the real needs of the vast majority of the population and those of our planet.
We must discuss and move towards another type of economic system, towards a society free of exploitation and the law of profit: a democratic socialist society. This is the only one capable of ensuring that a handful of ultra-rich people do not decide everything according to their interests. It is the only one capable of ensuring the harmonious existence of human beings and their environment. This lack of audacity concerning the alternative, not only to the ‘financial oligarchy’ but to capitalism itself, makes it possible to understand other weak points in our eyes, such as the retreat to the ’sovereign nation’.
This program can only become a reality if we create a relation of forces in the companies and on the streets around the organised workers’ movement, because the capitalist class will not allow such measures to be implemented without reacting.
In this struggle to appropriate the means, to implement such a program, and to move towards societal change, it is the working class that can play the leading role. In our view, this class approach should be a basis for the election campaign, together with an internationalist approach to the struggle.
The pressure for left unity
Since the beginning of the electoral campaign, permanent pressure has been put on the candidates of the left (or of the right, but seen as left) to achieve a form of unity of the left behind a single candidate, a strategy seen as the only one capable of winning the election. The first target of this campaign led by the mainstream media, Mélenchon, is regularly called upon to give up his campaign in favour of someone more consensual or moderate, even though he is largely in the lead among these different candidates.
The most famous sequence of this ‘unity’ campaign is the organisation of a ’People’s Primary’, which was organised to serve as a springboard for the candidacy of Christiane Taubira, a former minister under François Hollande, a figure supposedly left-wing, but who has always supported right-wing policies. This campaign is in fact an attempt to use the spontaneous tendency to unity that exists among the working class and the youth, an idea that has been misused to try to discredit the candidacy of Mélenchon, who is presented as not favourable to unity.
Why not a vote for the PCF vote or for a candidate to the left of Mélenchon?
Fabien Roussel of the PCF lines up a campaign and a program with strong points, similar to some of FI’s, and, in places, even stronger, such as the nationalisation of the banks BNP Paribas, Axa, and the Société Générale. But his campaign is also marked by elements to the right of Mélenchon, when he talks about controlling immigration, as well as on his program in general, even mocking the FI’s guaranteed employment project, which he calls “the return of kolkhozes”. Above all, with its proposal for a renewable/nuclear mix, the PCF has a climate plan that is far removed from ‘ecological planning’.
In every election, there is a left-wing figure who is used by the media and various ‘specialists’ to carry out right-wing attacks against the person most likely to represent a left-wing alternative that breaks with the system. This time it is Roussel against Mélenchon. In every government led by the PS, the PCF was part of the coalition, assisting them to carry out their anti-social policy. The situation is such at the local level that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish one from the other except by name.
ISA has of course a programme closer to those of candidates like Anasse Kazib (Révolution Permanente), Nathalie Arthaud (Lutte Ouvrière) or Philippe Poutou (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste). But as in 2012 and 2017, it is not a question here of approaching these elections from the point of view of participating just for the sake of it. A candidacy that only serves to promote a program and ideas can be important at certain times. But the question today is to know what can reinforce the class struggle and best popularise the need for societal change.
A candidate with a program of rupture, increasing class consciousness, addressing very broad strata and trying to mobilise them, and who is also capable of reaching the second round of the election, exists — that’s Mélenchon. This program for a leftwing break with the system and his campaign are a step forward, on which we can rely to make constructive proposals and put forward our socialist alternative. The challenge is also to participate in the construction of a relation of forces in society. To do this, we are better placed if we have a Mélenchon vs Macron or Le Pen or Zemmour in the second round, than if we have Macron vs Le Pen or Zemmour.
Imagine if Arthaud and/or Poutou had decided in 2017 to withdraw their candidacy to give critical support to Mélenchon, along the lines of ‘we commit ourselves 100% to this campaign with our own program in a constructive way, to try to put ‘l’Avenir en commun’ in the second round, and maybe even in the Elysée. And let’s prepare the revolutionary third round in the workplaces and in the streets!’ Where would we be now, 5 years later, in 2022? Much better placed. The question is being asked in similar terms today.
