In France’s recent parliamentary elections, there were massive mobilisations to keep the far right from taking power, in what was widely seen as a show of strength for the broad left. While the far-right Rassemblement National party (National Rally, RN), led by Marine Le Pen, won the highest number of votes in both rounds of the elections, they failed to win a majority of parliamentary seats.
The Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front, NFP) left alliance, led by the radical anti-capitalist France Insoumise (France in Revolt, FI), won the most seats.
Despite this, French President Emmanuel Macron refused to allow the NFP to form government and appointed Michel Barnier, from the traditional centre-right Republicans party, as prime minister.
Tempest interviewed John Mullen, a Marxist activist with the FI, about the challenges facing the left in France following the formation of the new right-wing government.
Green Left is publishing this abridged interview in two parts. Read part 2 here.
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What are the main lessons from the electoral process? Given that RN won the highest number of votes, do you consider the outcome of the second round a defeat for the forces of the far right?
You have to look at the dynamic of the situation. What looked like the unstoppable rise to government of the fascists was pushed back by the biggest mobilisation against them for decades.
The second round was an important tactical victory for the left and for the working class. Consistent polls predicted that the RN would win more seats than any other group, and might even secure an overall majority in parliament, but they ended up in third place. However, the far right will only remain on the back foot for a short period.
Four parties of the left formed a coalition — the NFP, comprised of the Communists, Socialists, Greens and the FI — and agreed on a fairly radical minimum program for government in record time. They were, it is true, under tremendous pressure from below (outside the building where negotiations happened, hundreds had gathered to chant slogans of unity). The result is that we do not have a fascist government.
Those political groups who were (and are) opposed to the coalition, one must imagine, consider that it changes little or nothing who is in government. Given that Marine Le Pen’s party has declared it wants the hijab to be banned in all public places, social housing to be reserved to French nationals and certain public sector jobs to be forbidden even to people with dual nationality, one can imagine there are few Muslims or people from ethnic minorities in France who are quite so relaxed about this prospect.
Even a minority government controls the police and the schools, and fascist ministers in charge of these domains would be a demoralising nightmare for our working class.
The reason I speak of a tactical victory is that the fascists remain very strong. They have 140 or so MPs (several dozen more than before) and they garnered ten million votes. The need for a mass antifascist movement to go onto the offensive against them is clear.
For the moment, RN is very weak on the ground. In many towns they have practically no party structure, and they have not organised a street demonstration of more than 10,000 people for decades. At its annual conference, the RN leadership noted that in addition to continuing the long march through the institutions and their obsession with respectability, they absolutely must build locally. It would be quite possible for antifascists to stop them with broad campaigns of education and harassment.
Because RN has concentrated on a parliamentary strategy, hoping to win power in the institutions to then permit a mass of street fighters, it is particularly the wrong time to argue that elections have no importance.
How should the left respond to Macron’s refusal to allow the NFP to form a government and his decision to appoint Barnier as prime minister?
Although the present crisis is a slow-burning one, it is the deepest in the country since 1968. The constitution forbids repeat parliamentary elections until June, so we will see weak minority governments, rapidly changing alliances and significant space for extra-parliamentary revolt.
Barnier’s government is stuffed with reactionaries who are copying ideas from the RN. But Macron would have preferred a more stable left-right coalition, and is unhappy that (so far) the left coalition, the New Popular Front, has held.
Every political organisation and political alliance in the country is fragile, including the Barnier government. It took a long time for him to choose ministers, and apparently he had to threaten to resign to make Macron accept his list. The ministers are already bickering publicly about whether RN is a legitimate democratic party or not.
The NFP has reacted by insisting that Macron is in contempt of democracy and that Lucie Castets, the agreed NFP candidate for prime minister, should have been appointed. Nevertheless, nearly half the Socialist Party National Committee wanted to break the left alliance, and voted to support a compromise PM, Bernard Cazeneuve.
It is essential that the whole of the left should defend the very limited democracy we have under capitalism. It does matter whether Macron respects elections or not. FI (but not the rest of the NFP) is campaigning for Macron to be impeached for not respecting democracy. This is a healthy, popular demand. The reactions of the revolutionaries have varied, but sadly almost none of the groups have supported the campaign for impeachment.
On other important questions of strategy, the far-left organisations are very far from unanimous. One of the bigger groups, Le Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (The New Anticapitalist Party) has joined the NFP as a minor player. Others are busy denouncing it.
At very short notice, the NFP was able to build an electoral coalition, one that mobilised broadly across the left, and within working-class, immigrant and Arab and Muslim communities. What is the ongoing impact of these mobilisations in the face of the right-wing government? Can this coalition be the basis for ongoing struggle against the right?
To some extent. On September 7, demonstrations led by youth organisations and FI, and looked on favourably by the leadership of the main left trade union confederation, the CGT (General Confederation of Labour), took place in some 150 towns across France.
The Green party and the Communists called for people to get on the streets, but the Socialist Party did not.
On September 21, there was a similar mobilisation, but it was considerably smaller. FI is at the centre of this dynamic, with other parts of the NFP sometimes agreeing to join in.
It is impossible to say what will come out of a situation which sees both dynamic mass activism and plenty of discouragement on the left. No doubt the key result on the ground is the 60,000 new people who have asked to get involved with FI and the many hundreds who have joined different revolutionary organisations.
The more parliament is paralysed, the more mass action outside parliament is crucial.
Sections of the revolutionary left are critical of the NFP, due to the participation of the social-liberal, pro-NATO Socialist Party. How do you respond to this? What is the balance of forces within the NFP?
You form coalitions with people you do not agree with. If FI leadership had said, “We will not ally with the social-liberals,” there would be a fascist-led government in France today. Every day gives good reason to mistrust most of the leadership of the Socialist Party (as well as the Communist Party), but it is critical that their leaders were pressured from below to sign on to a radical program to block a fascist government.
Like every political force in France today, the coalition is unstable and the right wing of the Socialist Party are getting organised in case the alliance falls apart.
Among other crises, a small group of four or five FI MPs have split off to its right, accompanied by acres of joyful newsprint from the right-wing media. Some of the less right-wing of Macron’s MPs have left his grouping, and the Greens are also having fierce internal debates.
The good news is that Macron’s Plan A and Plan B both failed. Plan A was the lightning speed election, which was supposed to knock out a divided left and leave Macron as “our only defence against fascism”. Plan B was to split the left alliance and set up a “national unity” government with the right and sections of the left outside FI.
The huge movement of strikes and street mobilisations, which is necessary and likely, stands more chance against this weak Barnier government.
[Abridged from Tempest.]