Kshama Sawant

Last week’s electoral victory for Kshama Sawant in Seattle has potentially made history for The United States and beyond. Kshama, an openly revolutionary militant, stood as a candidate for Socialist Alternative and won! The impact has been felt, on this side of the Atlantic, in the ongoing debate in Britain within the ranks of Left Unity. This organisation has grown out of 10,000 signatories to the appeal of film director Ken Loach for the creation of a new party to the left of Labour. Now at 1000 paid memberships LU is on countdown to a Founding Conference on 30 November in London. The supporters of the Socialist Platform of Left Unity– among them our comrades Kathrine Brannan and Henry Nowak ( see our article) have seen in Kshama’s victory a confirmation of their argument for ‘an openly socialist party’ and not just ‘a broad left party.’ The same debate is relevant right now in other countries, including France. Below, you will find our translation of an article from our Australian comrades of Red Flag which combines a lively report of Kshama Sawant’s campaign with an analysis of the reasons for its success and an appeal for unity of revolutionary organisations, too often in sectarian conflict with one another.The support given by the American comrades of ISO to the candidate of CIO is a positive example of a totally different strategy and attitude which we welcome in raising our glasses to the continuing success of Kshama Sawant and her comrades.

 Par Barry Sheppard (Site internet)

Kshama Sawant, an open socialist, won election to the Seattle city council in November’s ballot. One would have to go back to the first half of the twentieth century to find anything similar in the United States. Sawant, who was born in India, moved to the United States and is now a citizen. She first drew attention as part of the local Occupy protests in 2011.

While Occupy has faded, many of those who were inspired by it have organised on other fronts. These include opposition to foreclosures, support to the strikes and demonstrations by fast food workers, and opposition to coal trains coming through the Seattle area.

Sawant has been a vocal champion of these initiatives; activists from them formed the backbone of her campaign.

A few days after her victory was confirmed, the new city council member stood with Boeing workers who were locked in struggle against the company. The employees, organised in the International Association of Machinists, had by a large majority voted down a concessionary contract.

The Los Angeles Times reported: “The rain was cold, dripping down her blue poncho, but the newly elected city councilwoman’s words sizzled.

“Surrounded by union workers gathered to support Boeing’s machinists, Kshama Sawant denounced the two-party political system, corporate greed, military contracts and the leaders of the aerospace giant …

“‘We don’t need the executives!’ cried Seattle’s first elected socialist in living memory, as the damp crowd cheered and rush hour traffic hummed slowly by. ‘We need Boeing to be under democratic public ownership by workers – by the community!’”

Concrete proposals

Sawant’s campaign centred on three demands: raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, instituting controls to curb skyrocketing rents, and taxing millionaires to fund a public transit system and other city projects.

Such demands point in the opposite direction to the austerity pathway the Democrats and Republicans are charting. They struck a chord.

So did her denunciation of the two major parties. The whole country has watched them fail to address the needs of the “99 percent”. Meanwhile, the “1 percent” has been coddled during the Great Recession and its aftermath.

Sawant didn’t hide or downplay her socialist politics. The fact that she won on this basis in a citywide election is important.

It reflects that there is a new openness to socialism, especially among young people. An article in The New York Times quoted Sawant, “I think we have shown the strongest sceptics that the socialist label is not a bad one for a grassroots campaign to succeed.”

Even the man she defeated, 16-year Democratic Party incumbent Richard Conlin, said after the election, “I don’t think socialism makes most people in Seattle afraid.”

Recent polls show that 60 percent of 18-29 year olds favour socialism over capitalism. This should not be overstated. Neither Sawant’s victory nor these polls mean that socialism is well understood, or that large numbers now consider themselves socialists. Socialist organisations have been losing members, and the label is anathema to many, particularly in less progressive areas of the country.

But it does show that socialists can make inroads when they have concrete proposals, and when there is an audience for socialist ideas.

Breaking the Democrat stranglehold

Seattle is a solid Democratic Party city. This meant that Sawant did not face the obstacle of “lesser evilism”, whereby people are cowed into voting Democratic lest a Republican would win. The race here was between a Socialist and a Democrat.

Sawant’s campaign began modestly. She was able to utilise the fact that Seattle is a one-party town to point out that the Democrats serve the interests of the capitalists.

 “The Democratic Party machines … run these cities in the interests of the rich and powerful,” she said, adding that Conlin was a “corporate pandering politician”. As the campaign wore on, this became increasingly obvious.

“Conlin garnered donations from every single corporate real estate interest, downtown law firm, commercial construction magnate, railroad honcho, and so on,” one commentator noted.

Sawant rejected corporate donations. But as her campaign gained steam, her activist base raised a considerable sum of $125,000 (still less than Conlin spent).

Conlin also had the support of the Seattle Times (the major newspaper), the Democratic Party district committees, several unions, the mainstream environmental organisations and the other elected officials.

Sawant is an economics teacher at Seattle Community College. The American Federation of Teachers local endorsed her, as did a local of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). She was also endorsed by the Stranger, a community newspaper that appeals to the young, the radical and LGBTI people.

As her campaign’s momentum grew, there were interesting defections. Some Democratic officials broke ranks to support Sawant. Then the county labour council voted 28 to 21 to endorse the socialist. It wasn’t enough for a formal endorsement, but it made headlines.

Then Conlin came over to support a $15 minimum wage, as did the two Democrats vying for mayor.

Another factor in Sawant’s support was that Conlin was head of the city council’s land use committee, and had a pro-developer record. One activist wrote in a letter to the editor, “When ordinary citizens attended land use meetings in large numbers Conlin ignored our pleas” (to stop the developers riding roughshod over local people’s concerns).

“Council members said our ideas were ‘non-starters’, so we turned to Sawant and discovered that she understood our concerns. She is passionate about empowering people, not corporations.”

Sawant ran as the candidate of Socialist Alternative, an affiliate of the Committee for a Workers International based in Britain. The CWI considers itself Trotskyist.

Her campaign was endorsed by Solidarity and the International Socialist Organization. It is to be hoped that similar efforts can bring together revolutionary socialists of different backgrounds in the United States in common work and discussion.

The most powerful typhoon ever recorded in the Philippines and one of the worst in the world, super typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda slammed the central part of the archipelago and wrought devastation in its wake. The true extent of the damage to lives and property is yet to be known as Haiyan/Yolanda destroyed critical communications and power infrastracture thus limiting access to the worst hit areas.

Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) [Labor Party-Philippines] is appealing for solidarity and assistance to ordinary workers and poor who have suffered from the super typhoon’s impact. PM members among informal drivers and the urban poor in Tacloban, Leyte were among those severely affected and will be among the focus of the relief assistance.

The super typhoon swept through the islands of the central Philippines from Cebu to Panay where PM maintains chapters in the key cities. In Cebu and Bohol, the devastation of the typhoon comes on top of the destruction brought by a magnitude 7.2 earthquake less than a month ago. As in all the disasters brought about by climate change, the urban and rural poor suffer the most.

PM is appealing for assistance so it could offer relief at least to families of workers and poor which it has already organized. Relief assistance would complement the organizing efforts of PM on the basis of urban poor and working class issues.

PM is a political organization of the working class which engages in parliamentary struggle as a extension of the parliament of the streets. Even as PM has a strategic vision of social change, it actively fights for social reform and even involves in relief efforts as means to arouse, organize and mobilize the working people.

To donate online through paypal or via bank wire transfer visit PM solidarity page here

PM’s Facebook page

« Pourquoi en ces temps insidieux le Nouveau Parti doit représenter une direction éduquée ouvertement socialiste » : tel est le titre de la tribune de nos camarades Kathrine Brannan et Henry Nowak, publiée mardi 12 novembre 2013 sur le site de Left Unity. Le 30 novembre se tiendra le Congrès fondateur de Left Unity, un nouveau parti « à gauche du Labour » en cours de création à l’appel du cinéaste Ken Loach, qui réunit actuellement 10 000 signataires et 1000 membres cotisants. En vue de ce congrès se sont constituées diverses plateformes, dont la Left Party Platform, majoritaire dans la direction provisoire et qui se réfère volontiers à Die Linke (Allemagne) et au Front de Gauche (France) et la Socialist Platform que soutiennent nos deux camarades. Dans un débat qui « s’endort un peu actuellement », constatent-ils à regret, nos camarades soutiennent la Socialist Platform (SP) et répondent ici à ce titre à John Penney qui, en tant que supporter de la Left Party Platform (LPP), recommande au nouveau parti de prendre un profil bas, pour éviter de faire peur à l’électeur avec des mots supposés « effrayants » comme le mot « socialisme ». Au contraire nos camarades recommandent de « refuser de faire le coup du cheval de Troyes, d’une « gauche révolutionnaire retranchée dans les entrailles d’un mouvement radical large » dans l’attente du « moment approprié » pour surgir telle Superman. « L’avantage des idées présentées par J. Penney est d’être claires et de permettre ainsi de développer une contre-argumentation et d’ouvrir le débat », soulignent Kathrine Brannan et Henry Nowak. (le texte est en anglais)

In treacherous times why the New Party has to represent an educated openly socialist leadership

Kathrine Brannan and Henry Nowak, supporters of the Socialist Platform,
present a case against attempting to hide a Marxist revolutionary identity
within a ‘broad radical movement.’

Let’s refuse the Trojan Horse trickery of a ‘revolutionary Left deeply embedded within the broad radical movement’ waiting for ‘the appropriate moment’ to bound forth like Superman.

The ideas put forward by J. Penney for moving towards socialism have the advantage of transparency, even if his ultimate aim (socialism) is to be hidden until the ‘appropriate moment’ when all will become clear, even for the masses. His argumentation is useful for building a counter argument and political debate.

We have to assume his ideas as to the howof socialist transformation is likely to be central to the approach of the Left Party Platform : JP supports this platform and we do not recall any supporters of the LPP criticizing or disowning this approach. Certainly we know of other comrades associated with the LP platform who are Marxist and call for revolution but not in the case of LU where they seem to wear another more ‘acceptable’ hat.

The LPP does not advance its strategy openly, but limits itself to ‘progressive attitudes’; ‘Socialist, feminist, environmentalist and against all forms of discrimination. We stand against capitalism, imperialism, war, racism, islamophobia and fascism. Our goal is to transform society: to achieve the full democratization of state and political institutions, society and the economy, by and for the people.’ We would be hard put to find thinking people who disagree with these attitudes and rather vague and pleasant wishes. John Penney’s outline of how we might travel to this pleasant land allows us to demonstrate why the active strategy behind the LPP wish list is flawed.

Moving on to the substance of the argument:

It is clear what strategy J. Penney wants us to follow. He outlines three possible scenarios:

The first is a mass mobilization against the “Great Austerity Offensive”, forcing the ruling class to make some concessions “as a demobilizing tactic”. This is where, contrary to what some advocate of a “this is too abstract to discuss here and now” position would say, a grasp of Marxist economics helps : the room for manoeuvre of the ruling class, their capacity to accede to the working class’s demand is very limited: their crumbs would not feed a sparrow.

Secondly, and this is an incredible statement, we “get a social crisis leading to (…) a 1973 Allende Chile outcome’ : is the comrade seriously proposing that we deliberately engage on a path possibly leading to what amounts to a mass suicide? Does he really want to send unprepared, unarmed masses of working people against the state apparatus of the ruling class, just to make a point?

The third possibility, if we avoid (how?) the second outcome, is one of ‘Dual Power’ and a ‘socialist transformational opportunity.’ This I like better. But wait a second… Dual Power, we know where this comes from. And, those who developed this theory state that without a revolutionary party, based on a socialist program and with deep roots in the working masses, ‘Dual Power’ will inevitably end up in a bloody defeat of the insurgents. The 1871 Paris Commune, the January 1919 Spartakus uprising are cases in point. So, back to point 2. Furthermore, can anyone explain how, in a party explicitly built on a refusal of socialist identity and program, would ‘the revolutionary Left (…) deeply embedded within the broad radical movement, drawing out the political lessons for the class as the struggle deepens and progresses, and AT THE APPROPRIATE MOMENT pushing for leadership of the mass movement as it reaches that crucial political crossroads of reform/collaboration or socialist transformation.’

This is sheer daydreaming. The whole history of the labour movement tells us what happens ‘at the appropriate moment’, when the revolutionary left hasn’t built its own party. Do the names of Noske, Scheidemann, Ebert ring a bell? Does the fate of the Spanish revolutionaries murdered by Stalin’s thugs awaken some vague memories? By what magic, would revolutionary socialists, under deep cover, suddenly emerge from their foxholes and mobilize on a program they have never acknowledged before? Again, this is not a political strategy, but a pipe dream.

Trotsky spoke about the relation of masses and party in the Preface to his History of the Russian Revolution: ‘only on the basis of a study of political processes in the masses themselves, can we understand the role of parties and leaders, whom we least of all are inclined to ignore. They constitute not an independent, but nevertheless a very important, element in the process. Without a guiding organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston-box. But nevertheless what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam.‘ The problem we face, today, is not that the masses reject revolutionary ideas; the problem is that the ‘steam’ is not there to move the ‘piston’. The sad reality is that the working class has been absent from the political scene for the past 30 years.

Where such steam did arise, such as in the mass strike that engulfed the French West Indies in 2009, guess who was leading the movement? Total “nutters” ( as some like to warn unhidden revolutionaries will be tarred by the public): the openly communist, revolutionary, Trotskyite members of Combat ouvrier (Lutte Ouvrière’s branch in the French Antilles) and of Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire. Similarly, the defensive, but partially successful strikes at Continental tyre factory, and more recently the Peugeot plant in Aulnay, were led by members or close sympathizers of a very “nutter” organization, Lutte ouvrière, with members of other “ultraleft” tendencies playing a role. The only ones rejecting them were the scabs and company thugs! Other examples abound.

Right now,in the UK, at least four major unions are planning imminent strikes in their sectors against wage freezes and austerity measures. Never has the onslaught against the working class and it dependents been so vicious. This has been particularly evident in the crushing defeat of Unite in the Grangemouth booby trap set by the owner, Ineos. Unite had told workers not to surrender and demanded nationalisation of the plant. Workers first rejected the bosses’ blackmail and bullying. But Unite general secretary Len McCluskey finally surrendered saying the union will accept the firm’s demands “warts and all”. The warts include a wage freeze for three years and a commitment to no strikes in that same period. Obviously, retreat in the face of blackmail will encourage every boss across Britain to use the same tactics. It will encourage further assaults on pay, pensions, jobs and union rights. How to turn the tide?

 The worse form of defeat is a defeat without a fight. However, to win this fight you would have to take on not only the company but the forces of international capital and the Westminster and Holyrood governments, the capitalist media, all the political parties represented in both parliaments (with the possible exception of Respect and Galloway, the British and Scottish establishments, the TUC and STUC, the Unite leadership, and the British state. A daunting fight indeed. A strategy that could have won victory would have involved occupation of the site, the cutting of fuel supplies and an appeal to all rank and file workers in Britain and beyond for active solidarity all linked in to a call for the nationalization of oil and all the energy companies without compensation. Obviously such a fighting strategy does not have mass support at this time but without it we will just go down to more defeat

Surely this desperate situation points to the need for preparing, educating through agitation, reflection and debate an openly socialist and qualified party to lead, in the coming time.

Russel Brand is certainly not the Messiah of such a movement! However, the fact that his witty and irreverent humbling of that servant of the system, Jeremy Paxman went viral is indicative of a population, especially of young people, who are certainly not ‘put off’ by ‘revolution’ or ‘socialism’ in themselves. My young hairdresser had enthusiastically recorded the TV interview which, for those who insist on ‘simple language’ contained words like ‘failed paradigm’ and concepts like ‘tacit complicity’.

At the other end of the spectrum, Mr Saatchi (former chairman of the Conservative Party) warns his peers about the danger of underestimating ‘the power of socialism’. You can be sure that well funded research of popular opinion lies behind his unusual words, which are geared to stopping his colleagues making the mistake of branding Milliband a scary’ socialist’ as he points out this will scare no-one.

So why should we be scared?

Or should we not be more worried by the void left by our non-engagement with Marxist education and the taking on of leadership roles? In the ‘broad movement of the Left’ proposed by the LPP shall we, too, run with the crowds behind the one-sandaled madcap Russell, waving our shoes to the ‘Master’, now that we too have seen ‘The Sign’? (As in ‘The Life of Brian’)

If the popularity of calls to radically change the system is noted and welcomed, who will divert that shoe waving crowd as the New Messiah (and there will be others) exhorts them (eloquently) to ‘Revolt in whatever way we want, with the spontaneity of the London rioters, with the certainty and willingness to die of religious fundamentalists or with the twinkling mischief of the trickster’? (From an article ‘we no longer have the luxury of tradition’ Russell Brand 2013). There is no quick recipe for the building of a socialist movement but it is collective action by an increasingly organised working class that the ‘corrupt establishment’ fears more than the loquacious and sometimes dangerous ramblings of a licensed court jester.

Charles Darwin

I am a scientist by profession. As a scientist and a socialist I am continually exasperated by those who, whilst applying a strictly evidence based approach to certain aspects of their lives, are happy to abandon empiricism when it comes to politics says Colin Piper.

I think the history of science is full of lessons for us today as we try and build a new left movement and I would like to share some with you now.

I’m sure most comrades are broadly familiar with the story of Copernicus. He was a 16th century Polish monk who realised that the evidence pointed to a Universe that had the Sun at its centre and not the Earth. Copernicus correctly anticipated the reaction this idea would get from the established church and was justifiably scared, he therefore delayed publication of his book until just before his death. His ideas were later taken up by the Italian Galileo who was charged with heresy in 1633 and placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

The heliocentric model of the Solar System had in fact been proposed in the 3rd century B.C. but did not become widely accepted until the late 1600’s and not by the church for another hundred years. In short, it took two thousand years for an idea which we now know to be true to be universally acknowledged as the truth.

In 1912 the German meteorologist and polar explorer Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift. He went to West Africa and Brazil and found compelling evidence that the two had indeed been joined together at one time. He was universally dismissed as “a nutter” (to quote a post on this site describing me and other signatories to the Socialist Platform). Fifty years after his death incontrovertible evidence was found that proved he was correct after all.

Charles Darwin was another scientist who was acutely aware of the opprobrium his ideas would attract and he too delayed publication of his work as a result. As a scientist I find it interesting that, even today, Darwin’s theories remain one of the most contentious of scientific ideas despite actually being based on everyday experience and observation and backed by overwhelming evidence.

Darwin’s theory is essentially based on three observations that are non-controversial to any farmer or grower: 1) organisms produce more offspring than survive 2)  there are differences between individuals and 3) characteristics can be inherited.

Nevertheless the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection continues to attract the most passionate vilification, far more than say Quantum Theory or General Relativity for example, both of which challenge most people’s perceptions of the world in a much more fundamental way.

I think the reason is that Darwin’s ideas grew from the same philosophical stock as Marxism. I don’t think it a coincidence that Engels was one of Darwin’s earliest fans and used Darwin’s ideas in his ‘Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State’ a work of 1884 that modern anthropological evidence shows to have been fundamentally correct.

Darwin showed that tiny imperceptible changes, if given geological time to accumulate, could turn a sponge into a gorilla, or more accurately, could turn some unknown single-celled creature into both a sponge AND a gorilla, not to mention all the other myriad creatures on Earth. This is essentially an example of Hegel’s dialectical materialism, ‘quantity turning into quality’. I think it is this ‘revolutionary’ way of thinking that some people find impossible to accept, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

So what has all this got to do with Left Unity? If you believe, as some contributors to this site certainly do, that socialism has failed, doesn’t work and needs to be abandoned, that is fine. I urge you to argue your case as fervently and coherently as you can and back up your argument with evidence.

If, on the other hand, you are a socialist but, recognising that socialism is currently an unpopular and marginalised idea, think the way to build a movement is to in some way water it down or put it in the small print, then I think you are making a fundamental mistake.

The lives of the scientific pioneers I have touched on above have two lessons for us today in my view. On the one hand great harm has been done and progress stifled by the burying of ideas in an attempt to be more popular or to gain greater patronage and influence in the short-term. On the other hand great pioneers have been prepared to say what they believe to be true, even at the expense of ridicule and isolation, events proved them right.

Mostly dedicated to Rosa Luxemburg’s concepts of democracy and revolution, the International Conference animated by a wide-range of international scholars – from Germany, Brazil, France, Japan, England, India and Canada – gathered about 200 participants. This success shows how relevant the Rosa Luxemburg’s concepts remain in a time of multi-level crisis.

One of her most important contribution to modern Marxist thought is her refusal to separate the concepts of “democracy” and “revolution”. This approach is developed in her criticism of the limits of bourgeois democracy, her conception of the revolutionary struggle as democratic self-emancipation of the “great masses”, her vision of a socialist democracy, as well as her firm insistence – in discussion with Russian revolutionaries – on the importance of democratic freedoms in the transition towards socialism.

The economic and financial crisis, hitting so hard significant parts of the world and questioning the social model as well as the democratic structures, has led us to a political crisis that drives away from politics more and more citizens afflicted by both center-right and center-left governments. In this respect, Rosa Luxemburg’s questionings on the “masses” relationship with social transformation, parties and unions are more inspiring than ever. To her, a true change can only be assured by a massive people mobilization – beyond a mere “participation”, through forms of auto-organization and self-empowerment modifying the very role of parties and unions. This is the reason why she refuses to separate the concept of revolution from the concept of democracy. One cannot work without the other.

Many concrete examples of the interconnection between revolution and democracy can be seen throughout the world – whether it is in Tunisia, in Brazil, in Spain or in Turkey. At such occasions of spontaneous social demonstrations, people take to the streets and demand more democracy. Several speakers have referred to “Rosa Luxemburg’s moments” to characterize such movements. These recent movements, as well as the critical situation we are in, force us to reconsider or even to reinvent the questions addressed to the emancipatory movement as a whole. In this regard, Rosa Luxemburg’s concepts and the debate on their interpretation can be of considerable importance.

Conference organized and/or supported by:

• International Rosa Luxemburg Society
• University of Paris I Panthéon-La Sorbonne/ Centre d’Histoire des Systèmes de Pensée Moderne (CHSPM)
• Regional Council Ile-de-France
• Espaces Marx
• Rosa Luxemburg Foundation
• Gerda-und-Hermann-Weber-Stiftung
• transform! europe
• Collectif Smolny
• Revue internationale »Actuel Marx«
• Revue critique »Contretemps«

Campaigning for France’s two-round presidential election is hotting up. The first ballot takes place on April 22, when all but the top two candidates will be eliminated, and the second round will be held on May 6. The monarchical president – either rightwing incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy or one of his opponents – will form a provisional government, and will hope to gain a majority of deputies in the French national assembly when the legislative elections are held on June 10 and 17.

Sarkozy and the Parti Socialiste candidate, François Hollande, are running far ahead of their opponents and look set to qualify for the second round, but the Front de Gauche (FG) candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in alliance with the Parti Communiste Français, has unexpectedly gained support and now stands at 15% in the polls. He has promised his enthusiastic working class supporters that he will qualify for the second round: “We will do it!”

According to the media, Mélenchon is the “hard-left” candidate who calls for a “citizens’ revolution” (révolution citoyenne). Last week he raised the demand that Sarkozy “account for the misery and ignorance he has spread during his five years in office”. He was speaking at a rally at the Place du Capitole in Toulouse in front of 70,000 red-flag-waving supporters – only the latest in a series of mass rallies, where tens of thousands workers have come to hear him across the country. The climax of his campaign should be a monster rally in Paris three days before the election, where 100,000 are expected to gather from all over France. “This is not an ordinary campaign,” Mélenchon says, “but the first stage of a revolution: you cannot stop us! We can’t lose because it’s not only an election, but the révolution citoyenne on the march!”

Early campaigning

The classic right-left stand-off between the conservative Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, plus liberal allies, and the Parti Socialiste began to take shape when the PS organised primary elections open to every French voter in October 2011. For the first time these primaries were opened up to candidates of other leftwing parties, but only the bourgeois Parti Radical de Gauche availed itself of the opportunity to join in – the FG, PCF and far-left organisations kept their distance.

The PS primaries need to be mentioned, as they attracted more than 2.5 million voters – far more than the PS membership. Amongst the six candidates in the first round, François Hollande finished ahead of Martine Aubry and the former won the second round. But the third candidate was PS leftwinger Arnaud Montebourg, who picked up an unexpected 17%.

In a press release issued on December 9 Mélenchon congratulated Hollande, but put particular emphasis on the Montebourg result: “… I note especially the spectacular breakthrough of Arnaud Montebourg and his ideas of rupture, which he raises in terms often identical to those of the Front de Gauche”.

As campaigning began to get underway in January, Hollande was ahead in the polls – Sarkozy waited until February 15 to officially announce his own candidacy. Behind them were Marine Le Pen of the far-right Front National and the liberal François Bayrou, both with over 10% of voting intentions. At that time Mélenchon was languishing in fifth place – although even his 9% support contrasted favourably to the actual votes won by his most important current ally, the PCF, in the previous two presidential elections (just over 3% in 2002, falling to below 2% in 2007). The far left was, and is, doing even worse, with both the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) and the Trotskyist Lutte Ouvrière barely showing at only 0.5% each.

In the 2007 presidential election NPA candidate Olivier Besancenot received 4.08% of the vote (a little down on 2002, when he stood for the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire) and the perennial Lutte Ouvrière candidate, Arlette Laguillier, won 1.33% (a big drop from the 5.72% she had registered in 2002). Overall the far left’s electoral support seems to have diminished from around 10% five years ago to about 1% today. The fact that Besancenot stood down in favour of rank-and-file worker Philippe Poutou for the NPA, while comrade Laguillier retired and newcomer Nathalie Arthaud was selected for LO, does not explain this backward movement.

There is no doubt that the left-moving Mélenchon will gather the main part of the traditional far-left vote for the PG.

Sad tale of NPA

Readers will remember that the NPA (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste) was formed in February 2009 on the initiative of the Fourth Internationalist LCR, whose comrades made up the majority of the NPA’s active membership. The new party gained rapid support and later that year was claiming 9,123 signed-up members. Comrade Besancenot, who held out the “possibility of a new May 1968”, was dubbed the “de facto leader of the left” by one of Sarkozy’s ministers.

But Besancenot failed to go beyond the radical rhetoric. As millions of French workers went on strike against the Sarkozy government’s anti-working class attacks, in one of its first acts the NPA leadership joined forces with Mélenchon’s Parti de Gauche and the PCF in signing a statement “supporting the CGT and the other seven main trade union federations in putting ‘the maximum pressure’ on the Sarkozy government to ‘oblige it to enter discussions’ with the unions”. As we wrote at the time, the NPA backed “a cosy consensus with the government” when the working class needed “a clear political lead and a programme to break with the token protests of the union bureaucrats” (‘Everything to play for’ Weekly Worker February 12 2009).

At the same time Mélenchon, an ex-PS leader who had been a minister in Lionel Jospin’s 1997 government, was launching the broad Left Front (Front de Gauche) around his newly formed Left Party. Mélenchon called on the NPA to join an FG common list in the 2009 European elections together with the PCF. This proposal was welcomed by the NPA’s minority led by ex-LCR leader Christian Picquet, but the majority, including comrade Besancenot and veteran LCR leaders Alain Krivine and Daniel Bensaïd, put a condition on such an alliance: they would only join the Left Front if a long-term agreement was reached not to enter into any alliance with the Socialist Party in future elections, beginning with the regional elections in 2010.

Together with other Marxist members of the new NPA I considered at the time that instead of supporting a Mélenchon-PCF list in the European elections the NPA should formulate a “minimum revolutionary platform” for working class unity on a European scale, call on Lutte Ouvrière and others to join a list based on such a platform, and use the election to build the NPA profile and structures. Most probably this perspective was an optimistic one, as it went far beyond the NPA’s dynamics and capacity.

Instead of that, the NPA leadership took a ‘centrist’ position: while refusing Mélenchon’s proposal (Picquet and his supporters accepted them, splitting from the NPA and joining the FG), the NPA did not adopt a clear stand. It delayed several months before launching its own European list and platform, having engaged in seemingly endless discussions with the PCF, Mélenchon and other leftwing currents to try to reach an agreement. But these discussions took place behind closed doors, with little publicity: a kind of leftwing ‘secret diplomacy’, when an open and public debate would have been much more acceptable and productive.

This turned out to be even worst than an electoral agreement would have been: as the European elections have no practical consequences in reality (since the European ‘parliament’ has no real power), an electoral united front with the FG – for instance, a common list, with the different components standing on their own separate platforms – would have been far better. As it was, the NPA seemed paralysed until June 2009, and this caused more and more divisions within its ranks. The interminable discussions even gave rise to the idea of a possible “common programme of the left” uniting reformists and revolutionaries around a common platform: the same opportunist illusion which had destroyed the old PCF hegemony in the working class and prepared the way for the success of Mitterrand in the 1970s.

Some leaders of the NPA majority tendency, who were at the time amongst those most opposed to any alliance with Mélenchon, are today part of the mass desertion of the NPA for the Front de Gauche. The ex-NPA “Anti-capitalist-Left” is now pleading (rather unsuccessfully) for a good share of candidates for the FG’s legislative election campaign in June. One must remember that Mélenchon’s 2009 call to the NPA came before he was able to rally the PCF behind him: he was then asking for the support of the most successful electoral representative of workers, Olivier Besancenot.

In the end the Front de Gauche got 6.05% in the Euro elections and the NPA 4.88% . As soon as they were over, the NPA leadership entered into fresh discussions with the FG and others on the regional elections, which were to take place in March 2010. The talks centred again on the “PS question” and the supposed necessity of a “common programme”. The radical NPA had become mainly concerned with elections. In the event – one year after the NPA had been launched, having built on the previous electoral successes of comrade Besancenot – it went into the regional elections deeply split within its own ranks. While the FG more or less maintained its share with 5.84%, the separate lists of the far left (NPA and LO) could only muster 3.4% between them.

Radicalised working class

Since the presidential election of 1995, the tendency has been for the revolutionary left (the LCR, then NPA, and LO) to increase its share of the vote at the expense of the PCF. But most of all 1995 had marked a turning point in the mass movement – the November-December general strike was the largest since May 1968.

In 1995, the newly elected president, Jacques Chirac, and his prime minister, Alain Juppé, launched a massive programme of welfare cuts. Students and later workers went into action, with the major trade unions striking against a pay freeze and the ‘Juppé plan’. The strikes paralysed the whole country and Juppé was forced to tone down parts of his planned ‘reforms’. There followed major resistance to both the March-June 2003 assault on pensions, with millions on strike and on the streets in 2006, 2009 and 2010.

None of these movements obtained any important concessions from the ruling class – the right was in office for the whole of this time except for 1997-2002, when Lionel Jospin formed a PS government under Chirac’s rightwing presidency. The only real victory in this whole period came when students and young workers rebelled in April-May 2006 against Juppé’s CPE (first employment contracts).

As for elections, the increased support for the far left has been accompanied by reduced turnouts – this growing abstentionism has produced easy victories for the right. The class has proved its combativity and capacity to mobilise when it comes to strikes, but has obtained little to show for it and, most importantly, has failed to leave its mark on the political stage. But does the sudden upsurge in support for Mélenchon represent a departure?

According to Lutte Ouvrière, class-consciousness is low and the working class mood is one of disarray and despair. “Nothing serious has happened in this country,” LO leaders say, “since the 1871 Paris Commune and we have to be patient: it may take a century or more to have another Commune.” Hence the LO candidate Nathalie Arthaud’s logical conclusion: “To get rid of Sarkozy, as Hollande, Mélenchon and Poutou say, doesn’t mean anything, because Hollande would be no better than Sarkozy – he defends the bourgeoisie as well.”

There is more than a hint in all this of LO excusing in advance the poor showing of its own presidential candidate. In fact the powerful class momentum in favour of Mélenchon represents a step forward despite his reformist programme. Our class wants to call a halt to the massive social destruction and injustice Sarkozy has promoted and implemented in office. The reason why Hollande might well be elected, on a platform that is, of course, much more timid than Mélenchon’s, is that he promises to stop the social tsunami against the working class via a ‘softer’ austerity programme.

But even this is apparently unacceptable to the ruling class and finance capital, whose representatives are already warning that France will suffer devastating attacks via the monetary markets if Hollande is elected. He will come under intense pressure to become what Mélenchon calls “Hollandreou” (after the name of the former socialist Greek prime minister). Either France’s workers will resist or they will face the Greek treatment. That is why the most militant sections of the working class are rallying behind Mélenchon.

And that is why many Marxists in France are now calling for a vote for Mélenchon, combined (probably) with a vote for Hollande in the second round of the presidential election. Even some comrades who are still involved in the NPA, trying to salvage something from the project, and who are calling out of loyalty for a vote for the NPA’s Philippe Poutou, are engaging in the movement and rallies in support of the FG candidate. As one such comrade put it to me, “We cannot stand apart like the sectarian left”.

The call is: build the movement; critical support to Mélenchon.