By John Mullen, A Socialist In Canada, June 4, 2022 (with related reading further below)
(John Mullen is a Marxist writer in France and a member of the Nouvelle Union Populaire Ecologique et Sociale (NUPES). This article has appeared in left-wing, alternative media outlets in Germany, Britain and Australia. John Mullen’s website is here.)
In the run-up to June’s parliamentary election in France, the political atmosphere in the country has been transformed by a new left-wing alliance, the New, Popular, Ecological and Social Union (Nouvelle Union Populaire Ecologique et Sociale– NUPES). How important is this electoral alliance and what are its prospects?
Just over one month ago, between the first and second rounds of the French presidential election on April 17 and 24, the news was filled with depressing “debates” between conservatives and fascists about how best to defend the rich and mistreat Muslims. But after the second round vote on April 24 [Wikipedia], the radical left managed to regain the initiative by forming an electoral alliance and launching an ambitious campaign for the legislative elections to be held in two rounds on June 12 and 19. These will decide the government that will run France. The new alliance has provoked much enthusiasm, and considerable criticism. How useful will it be to working people?
Electoral politics is a distorted reflection of class struggle. For the last 20 years, France has been the stage for regular social explosions. Among them, there was the mass strike movement against François Hollande’s 2016 labour law, a law which worsened millions of people’s employment contracts; there was the (for the moment, successful) revolt against Macron’s attack on pension rights; and, of course, there was the impressive Yellow Vest rebellion.
These movements inspired and educated millions and showed a high level of class consciousness. Half the strikers in 2016, for example, were acting to defend the pensions of future generations, not their own. The social explosions were generally defensive in nature, reacting against vicious government attacks, sometimes from right wing governments, sometimes from Socialist Party governments. It is the relatively high level of class consciousness and combativity which has allowed the rebirth of left reformism in a radical and insurgent form – the France Insoumise party led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Of course, life would be easier for Marxists if people involved in these exciting and painful class struggles all realised at the same time the need to overthrow capitalism and eliminate forever the dictatorship of profit. But this is not the way of the world. Most were thinking ‘How can we get a government that doesn’t attack us?’ and ‘Surely we can get a government that is on our side for a change?’
Millions now feel the Nouvelle Union Populaire is the answer to this question. Formed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and France Insoumise (France Unbowed) after Mélenchon’s impressive score of 7.7 million votes in the April 2022 presidential election, NUPES involves other left parties roughly in proportion to their presidential scores: notably the Greens (who got 1.5 million votes), the French Communist Party (800,000) and (what is left of) the Socialist Party (600,000).
The aim is to win a parliamentary majority in June and apply radical reforms. As a result, television discussions are now, to our delight, filled with questions about raising the minimum wage by more than 15 per cent, increasing all public sector salaries by 10 per cent, allowing people to retire at the age of 60, taxing the rich, and freezing prices on basic foods and on fuel. The NUPES has published a list of 650 proposals, adding up to (as Mélenchon has termed it) “spectacular change”. Other key measures include ending nuclear power, 100,000 new hospital jobs, and “refounding the police” in response to frequent police violence against demonstrators and ethnic minorities.
The France Insoumise MPs elected in 2017 were already different from most MPs: a care worker, a librarian, a radical journalist, a leading fighter against islamophobia: all rare sights elsewhere in the National Assembly. The New Popular Union is now presenting some new candidates who symbolise grassroots revolt: for example, Rachel Kéké, one of the Black leaders of a very long hotel cleaners’ strike, and Stéphane Ravacley, a baker who hit the news when he went on hunger strike to stop the expulsion from France of his young Black apprentice.
The coalition aims at winning a majority in parliament in the June 12/19 elections. Arguing that Macron only won because people were voting against his fascist opponent, the NUPES leadership say it is the left which can win the legitimacy to govern the country.
Mélenchon’s programme is popular. A poll in mid-May by major television channel TF1 put NUPES at the top of first-round voter intentions at 28 per cent, as against 27 per cent for President Emmanuel Macron’s candidates and 22 per cent for the far-right parties. Winning a parliamentary majority is nevertheless an uphill struggle for the NUPES, since in the second round of a two-round election, those who voted fascist in the first round will often support Macron’s party. Yet in the last parliamentary elections, in 2017, over 20 million people stayed at home on election day. If the radical left can mobilise those who usually abstain, everything is possible.
Enthusiasm
The most important effect of the launching of the new coalition has been a rise in enthusiasm among voters and activists. The dynamic of the presidential campaign has continued, with neighbourhood meetings in every town and much door-to-door canvassing. It is a mass campaign of mobilisation and education. Nevertheless, there are points of tension. Many feel that, although the slate of candidates is less white and elite than usual, it should be considerably less white still, and include more grassroots activists.
In addition, the inclusion in the NUPES alliance of the Socialist Party as a junior partner (which will stand as NUPES in 70 constituencies of the 570 in total) has been controversial. Many NUPES supporters say that this inclusion has allowed NUPES to make the most of the real roots that the Socialist Party has in a few regions, and further, the agreement on the key points of the NUPES programme to which the SP has signed up has accelerated the crisis in the party and may even see its right wing leave the party. Supporters say that in this way, NUPES has no real opposition on the left and this unity can help build the mass dynamic needed to win. Others on the left consider any agreement with the Socialist Party, even though the latter is weakened, is unacceptable and may be the beginning of a drift rightwards.
Many Marxist activists are involved in the NUPES campaign. Three fairly small revolutionary groups work with it (two of which produce their own newspaper). But the biggest (though not very big) far-left group, the New Anticapitalist Party, is very much divided on the question. It has decided that each NPA branch can decide whether to support or not support NUPES locally.
Hope and danger
The objective of the Nouvelle Union Populaire is to use the capitalist state to limit the power of capital, not to break this power. There is certainly no shortage of dangers. Let us summarise the main ones.
Firstly, well-funded media smear campaigns and right-wing movements could push NUPES backwards and help the right wing win. Secondly, in case of a victory by the NUPES alliance, the huge powers of international capital will move into action to stop the programme being put into practice by the new government. Finally, an intermediate result, in which NUPES was able to form a government only by allying with forces to its right, would put strong pressure on NUPES leaders to hugely water down the programme.
Many NUPES activists are aware that mass mobilisation is key to limiting these dangers. Mélenchon himself insists that one of the main reasons for the relative failure of the radical left government of President François Mitterand during the 1980s was the lack of popular mobilisation. Naturally, only Marxists go one step further and insist that such mobilisation must eventually aim at a new kind of state which can definitively break the power of capital.
But for Marxists to persuade people of this, they need to be part of the present movement for spectacular change. The situation does not need guardians of the pure revolutionary flame without fuel, whose ambition is to say ‘I told you so’ more poetically than other activists. In a situation where most workers do not have a clear idea what a socialist revolution is, or how to distinguish it from the “citizens’ revolution” called for by Mélenchon, it is essential to be able to defend our ideas while building the struggle for radical reforms alongside many thousands of others.
A terrified elite
The ruling class in France, in any case, is terrified. Media scare campaigns and smear campaigns are running at high temperature. The front page of the principal conservative weekly, Le Point, says Mélenchon is “another Le Pen” and “a charlatan” with “a taste for dictators”. Another right wing outlet says “Mélenchon thinks he is the messiah.” On television, Mélenchon is presented as “a dangerous man”. The NUPES is a “monstrous radicalism” which “submits to Islamic fundamentalism”, an alliance which is “outside of democratic rules” and is “an insult to democracy”. One leading member of the right wing of the Socialist Party claimed Mélenchon would make France into North Korea while another complained that by joining the alliance, the Socialist Party was “selling its soul to the monster”.
Macron and the right, meanwhile…
President Macron had promised that his second term “will not be a continuation of the term just finished” but a “réinvention”, a “complete renewal”. Still, after his cabinet reshuffle and change of Prime Minister in late May, Le Monde headlined ‘Macron chooses continuity’. Under pressure from his left, he made two choices which he hoped would satisfy the less right wing of his supporters.
First, he appointed a woman prime minister–Elisabeth Borne. She claims to see herself as “a woman of the left”, but no one else appears to have noticed. Her past record includes organising the partial privatisation of French railways and being a key player in Macron’s plan to smash the French pensions scheme.
Secondly, Macron appointed a Black historian as minister of education. Certainly not a left-wing man, Pap N’diaye has nevertheless spoken against the ridiculous Islamophobic campaigns led by the previous education minister, Jean-Marie Blanquer, who had claimed that French universities were dominated by scary “Islamoleftists”. This is a welcome step backwards for the Islamophobes, who are under much more pressure ever since Mélenchon’s party has moved to defending Muslims.
The Islamophobes are on the offensive elsewhere though. A huge row has blown up over the decision of the town council of Grenoble to authorise in council-run swimming pools the wearing of full-body swimsuits which Muslim women occasionally wear. Racist regional governments responded by announcing they would cut funding to any swimming pool that made this decision. The state took the question to the courts in emergency session, and the town council in Grenoble was ordered to suspend the authorisation of this piece of clothing in the swimming pools. Although the subject may seem trivial, it has given rise to a major racist campaign presenting Islam as incompatible with women’s rights and democracy.
The reaction on the left is poor. Important steps forward in recent years have led to Mélenchon now defending Muslims regularly and publicly against Islamophobia in general terms. But the left still has a long way to go. Almost all national leaderships of left organisations have avoided committing themselves on the issue because their organisations are divided. Mélenchon declared he should not be expected “to comment on the rules of swimming pools”. The NPA newspaper avoided the issue, too.
A key fight
After the billions spent on the pandemic, and determined not to tax the rich, Macron, if his party is re-elected, will turn austerity programmes up even higher. Recent polls show that 46 per cent of people in France consider poverty and wages (or, as the pollsters quaintly put it, ‘buying power’ —pouvoir d’achat) are the number one issues in the forthcoming elections, polling far ahead of any other question. The NUPES campaign for spectacular change is providing hope and education to huge numbers of people. It needs everyone’s support.
Related reading: Jean-Luc Mélenchon has shown how to build a radical, broad electoral coalition, by Julian-Nicolas Calfuquir, published in Jacobin, June 4, 2022 (Julian-Nicolas Calfuquir is national executive secretary of the youth network of the Parti de Gauche, the political party led by Jean-Luc Melenchon in France.)
