France: Resurgence of the Left

BY:Lal Khan It was in Latin America and particularly Venezuela, where the resurgence of class struggle began. The movements in Europe, especially France, in the autumn of 2010, triggered the Tunisian revolution For the first time in more than three decades, a ‘hard’ left candidate has got into double digits in the polls for the first round of the French Presidential elections being held today. According to the polls, Jean- Luc Melenchon, the candidate of the Front de Gauche (Left Front) supported by the Communist Party of France (PCF) had mustered 17 percent support amongst the electorate. He is now the third most popular candidate after the Socialist Party’s Francois Hollande and UMP’s Nicolas Sarkozy, the incumbent President. Melenchon has rapidly bypassed the far right National Front party’s Marine Le Pen. At the rally of more than 100,000 at the Bastille Square to launch the campaign on March 18 — anniversary of the Paris Commune — Melenchon thundered, “Spirit of Bastille, we are back; the people of revolutions and rebellions in France. We are the red flag!” The meteoric rise of Melenchon, born in Tangiers, Morocco in 1951, who shifted with his parents to France in 1962, has set alarm bells ringing in the bastions of capitalism far and wide. Bourgeois commentators who until recently ignored him, suddenly could not help pour scorn on him. BBC has called him a “maverick, vulgar, sarcastic, venomous, a bully and narcissist out to provoke” and The Economist, one of the most ardent defenders of capitalism, had typical cynicism for him: “Into the left’s emotional void has stormed Jean-Luc Melenchon, a onetime Trotskyist who is now running for president, backed by the communists. Over the past six weeks Mr Melenchon’s fiery speeches, clenched fists and Utopian promises have captured the left’s imagination...With a nod to 1789, he promises a ‘civic insurrection’, withdrawal from NATO, a 20 percent rise in minimum wage, a100 percent top tax rate (on incomes above $ 473,000 per year) and retirement for all (with full pensions) at 60. It goes down a storm. His rallies at public squares, including at Bastille, end with singing of the Internationale.” The Economist does not mention immediate troops withdrawal from Afghanistan, repealing anti-immigrant laws, public education from the age of two, nationalisation of energy giants and big banks, no austerity measures and renegotiation of EU agreements. In an interview with The Guardian, Melenchon warned rich people who will try to flee France, “No point in leaving because we will catch you. If they don’t pay we will seize what they own...Look we have to smash this prejudice that the rich are useful just because they are rich. Capitalist propaganda always managed to make people think that the market’s interests were humanity’s interests...They call me dangerous because I am dangerous for financial interests and oligarchy in France and Europe...US is in a crisis of hegemony. US’s only comparative advantage today is its military. It’s dangerous because it is a wounded beast.” He lampooned the Socialist Party for not breaking with capitalism and instead falling into the illusion that there could be ‘Good Capitalism’. This is not a thunderbolt from a clear blue sky — it is an expression of a changing epoch where dramatic events are taking place at lightning speed. The class struggle and the left were portrayed as a spent force. Socialism and communism had allegedly failed and a free market economy was the only choice left for humankind. The verdict of the end of history was pronounced. However, at the dawn of the new millennium, it was in Latin America and particularly Venezuela, where the resurgence of class struggle began. The movements in Europe, especially France, in the autumn of 2010, triggered the Tunisian revolution. This culminated in the Arab revolution from the shores of the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Then we saw the Occupy Wall Street Movement that resonated across the planet. The unexpected rise of Melenchon has had to fight a ferocious media campaign and a capitulation of leaders of the traditional workers parties and the unions to capitalism. Revolutionary socialism was abandoned by most left leaders. Melenchon may not win but his radical campaign will have far-reaching implications on the politics and social psychology of Europe and far beyond. With Spain falling back into a recession, there is not a single country in Europe that has confidence of an optimistic economic and financial future. If Hollande wins, his austerity policies will be similar to Sarkozy and probably even worse. Austerity will curtail the market and the debt crisis will inflate. If he shies away from austerity measures, the French capitalist economy could go into a downward spiral, leading to an even deeper recession. This is probably the biggest slump in the history of capitalism and may not recover any time soon. It will be a protracted and painful process that might last for decades. A Sarkozy victory will unleash some of the most unfair attacks on French workers. With its traditions, the French proletariat and youth will not take it lying down. This will unleash a vigorous class struggle and it will affect the whole of Europe to start with. French capitalism is in an impasse. The living conditions are plummeting. Although Melenchon’s policies seem very radical in the context of the last period, they fall short of a general programme of socialist expropriation of capitalist interests. It is an attempt to abolish the consequences of capitalism without abolishing capitalism itself and the state that perpetuates its dominance. Marx called France the ‘mother of all revolutions’. The first revolution in history when the proletariat took power as a class was the Paris Commune of March 1871. Marx wrote at the time in his celebrated work, The Civil War in France, “The working class cannot simply lay hold of the readymade State machinery and wield it for their own purposes. The political instrument of their own enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of their emancipation.” Stormy events impend. The heat of class struggle can revive the PCF into a mass communist party with its revolutionary traditions of the 1920s. A victorious revolution in France will become the precursor of a united socialist federation of Europe and this in turn will have revolutionary implications throughout the world. The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at pyudc@hotmail.com