The election of Nicolas Sarkozy as France's president in April and the landslide to the conservatives in the first round of the parliamentary elections on June 10, described in France as the "blue wave", were widely presented in the Australian capitalist media as a dramatic shift to the right in French political life. They are all too keen to wipe out last year's images of French workers and students successfully resisting anti-worker laws, something they only grudgingly reported on in the first place.
French bosses are hoping that Sarkozy will be able to deliver on his rhetoric about "modernising" France and imposing an "Atlantic" model, and at long last they will be able to go down Anglo-Saxon path of dramatic deregulation, privatisation, tax cuts for the rich and smashing workers' rights. However, for Sarkozy translating his electoral victory into a social defeat of French workers is another matter.
Since 1995, workers, students and immigrants have mobilised in huge numbers to resist government attacks. The struggles of workers and social movements have been mostly defensive and not always successful, but their size and occasional victories, most recently against the First Employment Contract laws in 2006, have blocked French employers and the government from proceeding as far and as fast with their neoliberal project as they have done in other countries.
While Sarkozy is a hardline pro-business "neo-con", the conservative parliamentary majority is a lot more heterogenous. Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) now unites nearly all of the previously divided mainstream right-wing parties, including the populist Gaullist movement. This movement, particularly its small business and rural support base, takes seriously its rhetoric about standing up for little guy and being "neither left nor right". If Sarkozy tries to drive through unpopular measures that meet mass resistance, he will create enormous tensions within the UMP.
So can the workers and social movements revive and sustain resistance in the face of their new challenge? Certainly there is no indication yet that the willingness to mobilise in such large numbers as in 2006 has gone away.
While Sarkozy's victory is a setback for French workers, it is important not to overestimate either his electoral victory or how much it indicates people have taken on his ideas. The dominant sentiment remains cynicism towards mainstream politicians, fuelled largely by the unwillingness of the Socialist Party (PS) to present a serious alternative to Sarkozy's platform. PS presidential candidate Segolene Royal combined vague progressive populism with simultaneously trying to compete on Sarkozy's own ideological terrain, with proposals to have the flag flown more in public places and talk about "family values".
In the first round of the presidential elections, 85% of the population voted, a huge figure in a country where voting is not compulsory. However, this slumped to just over 60% for the parliamentary poll. Large numbers of demoralised left-wing voters, especially migrants and young people, felt that since Sarkozy had already won the presidency, the parliamentary elections were irrelevant. Shocked by projections that the UMP might win as many as 425 seats and the left only around 100, left-wing voters rallied for the second round, where the left got 49.6% to the right's 50.4% (as compared to 39% and 50.3% in the first round).
In the end, the UMP actually lost around 35 seats, but retained its absolute majority, winning 323 seats out of a total of 577 in the assembly (lower house). France has a first-past-the-post system where the ballot goes to a second round between the top two place-getters if no candidate gets more than 50% in the first round. Although slightly more democratic than the British system, it still creates a distorted winner-takes-all outcome.
The UMP also benefited from the collapse in the vote for the far-right racist National Front (FN) of Jean-Marie Le Pen, down from 19% in the 2002 presidential election to 10.4%, a drop in real terms of 1 million votes. Meanwhile his daughter and heir apparent Marine Le Pen, the party's best chance for a seat in parliament, failed. Across the country they averaged just over 4% in the parliamentary elections.
However the flip side of the FN's decline is the fact that many of its ideas and some of its language have been adopted by the mainstream right. Sarkozy beats the racist drum like most "respectable" politicians and proposes to establish a "ministry for immigration and national identity". During the outbreak of confrontations between police and disaffected youth in the suburbs in 2005 he backed police violence all the way, calling the youth "scum". Le Pen complains with good cause that Sarkozy has "stolen" his policies.
The ability of French workers to fight back will be shaped in part by the recomposition of the left that is taking place. The PS is moving rapidly to the right, and the once mighty Communist Party (PCF) is in complete crisis. On the other hand, the far left Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) has succeeded in carving out a place for a revitalised class struggle politics, as evidenced by the 4.08% — some 1.5 million votes — won by its presidential candidate, Olivier Besancenot.
If the elections were a setback for the left as a whole, they were a disaster for the PCF, accelerating a crisis within it that may be terminal. The party was the backbone of resistance to Nazi occupation and emerged from the World War II covered in glory. For the next four decades it consistently polled over 20% in parliamentary elections.
However in the 1980s the PCF hitched its wagon to the PS, accepting cabinet posts in return for supporting PS governments. This relationship was cemented by mutual non-aggression pacts between the PS and the PCF in selected seats. But the PCF paid a heavy price. By allying itself so closely to the pro-business policies of the PS it has alienated its traditional working-class support base and failed to attract the new generation of young militants. In the presidential elections it only scored 1.93%, its worst result ever.
In the parliamentary elections the PCF scored 4.15%. However, this figure is inflated by the votes for its 21 incumbent deputies (18 of whom were returned) who didn't face PS opponents. If figures for these candidate are removed, its average vote was below 2% — less than the LCR. The PCF has gone from being a true national force to a handful of regional bastions led by deputies and mayors dependent for their electoral survival on the good grace of the PS.
With the PCF so weakened and with less to give in return, the PS leaders are less inclined to do it favours and have already hinted that they will no longer leave its sitting members uncontested at election time, which would probably wipe the PCF out completely. The PCF is planning a special congress to discuss the way forward, and already some its more conservative leaders are talking about a new party of the left with the PS as a way of safeguarding their slice of the pie.
The Greens have also degenerated into an appendage of the PS. Their talk about being a new force in politics was betrayed by their enthusiasm for cabinet posts in governments of the so-called "plural left" dominated by the PS. They polled 1.5% in the presidential elections and 3.25% in first round of the parliamentary poll. However, like the PCF, this latter figure was inflated by the handful of seats where the Greens were endorsed by the PS.
The collapse of the PCF also frees up the PS to move more decisively to the right. For a long time the PCF's anti-capitalist rhetoric has been just that. However, the expectations of the PCF's own support base have been a real brake on the ability of the PS to "modernise" itself in the mould of the "labour" parties in the English-speaking countries. With the PS now looking for parliamentary allies among "centre" parties to its right, French workers and the social movements can expect to find it lining up more and more on the other side of the barricades in the struggles to come.