The pathetic end of the French “anti-capitalist left”

A national meeting December 9-10 of the so-called “collectives” in Ile Saint-Denis, north of Paris, was unable to agree on a common candidate for the 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections, as the various political groupings that made up the collectives were hopelessly divided. The collectives were formed two years ago out elements of the French Communist Party (Parti Communiste Français—PCF), the Revolutionary Communist League (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire—LCR), various trade unions, social protest movements, opponents of globalization, some individual representatives of the Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste—PS) and the Greens.

Above all, the pseudo-Trotskyist LCR has doggedly sought to bring about the union of all the left organizations that advocated a “No” vote in France at the time of the May 2005 referendum on the European Union constitution into a broad political movement or party.

According to the LCR, the successful “No” vote in the referendum meant a “new situation on the left” had now arisen, as the organization put it at the party’s 16th congress in January 2006. The “No” vote forms the “starting point for the preparation of a common movement against the politics of the government” and makes possible “the setting up of a new anti-capitalist force.” The LCR has committed itself to unite all the left opponents of the European Union constitution in a new formation that “is able to politically express the real balance of power in favour of a left which is 100 percent left-wing.”

The LCR entertains great hopes in the Stalinist PCF, which, according to its congress resolution, “stands at the crossroads”; the PCF, says the LCR, confronts the inevitable choice “between the affirmation of an anti-capitalist left as the logical continuation of the ‘No’ campaign and the reconciliation of the left organizations of the ‘No’ and the ‘Yes’ camps with the perspective of forming a government.” The “left organizations of the ‘Yes’ camp” refers to the right-wing majority of the Socialist Party, which vehemently advocated the acceptance of the European Union constitution.

The PCF welcomed the LCR’s offer and took part in the collectives, seeing it as an opportunity to refurbish its left-wing image, which has been seriously compromised by decades of close collaboration with the Socialist Party and its participation in numerous PS-led governments.

However, during the past year it became clear that the PCF had absolutely no intention of breaking off relations with the Socialist Party. This came as no real surprise to anybody who understands French politics; the PCF has been a defender of French capitalism and a reliable prop for the French bourgeois state ever since the PCF joined the Popular Front governments of the 1930s and participated in the first post-war government under Charles de Gaulle. In 1968, it played a key role in suppressing the general strike. In 1971, it allied itself with François Mitterrand’s Socialist Party, and between 1981 and 2002 held ministerial office in numerous governments.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/left-j09.shtml