A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #343 - The stakes of the electoralist confinement advocated by trade unions and political organizations (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The summer's political soap opera ultimately saw Mr. Barnier become 
Prime Minister. He is a politician experienced in all maneuvers, 
advocating a reactionary policy that is largely favorable to the big 
bourgeoisie. The so-called "left-wing" political and trade union 
organizations are protesting because the "left" was supposed to govern 
following the legislative elections. The important thing for us is not 
to know which horse should be the right one to lead the government, but 
to understand the political stakes of the discourse of the left-wing 
organizations, particularly the trade unions. Because the latter seek to 
lock us into an electoralist game that demoralizes those who hope for 
progressive change.

The so-called democratic politicking
The legislative elections did not give a majority to any party or group 
of parties. Worse for the bourgeoisie, apart from the RN which has 126 
deputies and a priori a homogeneous political line dictated by Marine Le 
Pen, the other "blocs" are composed of different parties, each seeking 
to distinguish themselves from each other. Thus, if the NFP has 193 
deputies, 72 are in LFI, 66 in the PS, 38 ecologists and 17 in the PC. 
The fragmentation is identical on the right. Macron is trying to keep 
the political hand, as much out of narcissism as out of duty to the 
capitalists. But the situation is complicated for him because of the 
balance of political power in the assembly and by the usual political 
game: all the big names have the presidential elections in their sights 
and therefore seek to take the leadership of "their camp" or to stand 
out in this political game, like E. Philippe. Usual politicking but in 
an atypical situation. In this situation, all the left-wing political 
leaders hammer home to us "respect for democracy". For them, we must 
fight for a left-wing government to emerge because the NFP would have 
emerged victorious from the elections. On the one hand, if democracy 
were to be respected as these bourgeois politicians say, the RN should 
have benefited from important positions in the assembly (while it 
obtained nothing from the post-election bargaining). Above all, let us 
note that the RN was the party that received the most votes: 9.4 million 
in the first round, ahead of the NFP with 9 million votes. Are we going 
to demand, in the name of "respect for democracy" that the government 
carry the RN program? The RN remained silent in the fair of "who will be 
prime minister?" because it knew that it would reap all the benefits. 
Indeed, all the political leaders have shown in this sequence that they 
only defend their own boutique interests (one only has to look at the 
number of contenders for the post of prime minister). This fully 
justifies the RN's "all rotten". Especially since in the end, he was the 
one who won by seeing a Prime Minister who was ideologically close to 
him appointed while the RN appeared to be the only one not to have 
entered into these political schemes.

Everyone is playing the MEDEF game
If Macron refused to appoint a government based on the NFP program, it 
was not just a personal whim. The MEDEF put pressure on Macron, 
considering that the NFP program would lead to the "downgrading" of 
France. However, the MEDEF does not fear the worst with the NFP, it 
knows very well that a so-called left-wing government will not attack 
its fundamental interests, it has experience of this as we do. The 
example of England is revealing of the deception of the governmental 
left: barely having come to power (early July) the left-wing Prime 
Minister (Keir Starmer, Labor Party) announced "Things will get worse 
before they get better... difficult decisions... a painful budget... 
short-term sacrifices".
For example, on pensions, the NFP only claims to reverse the worst part 
of the last reform: the retirement age. It does not talk about reversing 
the reform made by François Hollande in 2014, which increased the 
working time required to have a full pension to 43 years, nor does it 
propose reversing the reductions. In short, even with such a reform, 
most people will not retire at 62 but later. Furthermore, as soon as 
Lucie Castets was tipped to become Prime Minister, she stated "the idea 
is to convince text after text, law after law, we will seek coalitions". 
In short, as Prime Minister, nothing will change. For example, on the 
minimum wage of EUR1,600, she immediately warned that this was only a 
"horizon" (so that it would not happen immediately, or even ever) 
because it was this reform that bothered the employers the most. To 
entice businesses, the NFP had nevertheless put forward the idea of 
giving aid to businesses for this increase in the minimum wage, in 
short, using public funds to help capital. Above all, since the minimum 
wage exempts employers from contributions (exemptions for salaries up to 
1.6 times the minimum wage), an increase in the minimum wage without a 
general increase in salaries would allow businesses to see a significant 
increase in the number of employees on the minimum wage or slightly 
above, allowing them to benefit from additional tax breaks. Therefore, 
even this measure would not have unduly bothered the bourgeoisie. But 
symbolically, it could give the impression that Capital was losing a 
little. Indeed, for big capital, any government must be at the beck and 
call of the immediate interests of the capitalists. They refuse to give 
up the slightest crumb of profits or give the impression of having to 
make concessions. To do this, it was necessary not to give the slightest 
illusion of victory following the unexpected electoral success of the 
NFP. Giving in to the NFP for Macron was therefore not about fearing an 
offensive policy against the interests of the capitalists, it was about 
letting the oppressed believe that they had won against him, and 
therefore against the interests of the capitalists, via left-wing 
politicians with objectives that were nevertheless not very offensive. 
The NFP was not mistaken in proposing Lucie Castets. She is a politician 
close to the PS (former financial director of the city of Paris) and who 
everyone knows is not very radical. Even LFI praised this politician, 
Mélenchon stating "She belongs to the large family of "the left of 
rupture"", because the entire NFP was trying to show Macron and the 
MEDEF that it had understood the message: no political radicalism can 
create hope.

The electoral impasse proposed by the unions
Macron marked for 2 months, by his hesitations, all his political 
fragility because he no longer had the legitimacy considered necessary. 
There was no longer a real government. One could have imagined that 
political or union forces would take advantage of this to go on the 
offensive. On the contrary, all called for respect for democracy, 
proposing that we only go and demonstrate so that the NFP would govern. 
The only strategy was focused on the institutional battle. The CGT, 
after having campaigned for the NFP (a new development for the CGT), put 
forward as a line of demands in its leaflets in August: "The President 
must now respect the choice of the ballot boxes". SOLIDAIRES wrote at 
the same time: "The Solidaires union has fully subscribed to the united 
and dynamic campaign that has made it possible to block the extreme 
right...[Macron]is embarking on a headlong rush, denying the election 
results". FO fonction publique openly called for the demonstration on 7 
September in support of the NFP political organisations with the title 
"In the face of the "resigning" government, defend democracy and 
demands!" Even the NPA (Poutou-Besancenot), which is certainly not a 
union, but which also denounces the "democratic denial". The unions 
refused to immediately take advantage of the weakness of the political 
power and of Macron. They could have taken advantage of the 
institutional uncertainty at the beginning of July to immediately call 
for the imposition of social demands from "below", for example by 
proposing demonstrations and offensive strikes. Or by calling for 
joining the call of September 7 to try to impose through the streets and 
strikes the application of the NFP program on pensions and salaries 
rather than having as a watchword the impotent demand for cohabitation 
with Macron. Mobilizing on the social and non-political terrain made it 
possible to broaden the social base likely to mobilize. Conversely, 
after having embedded social unrest in the institutional framework, all 
these unions sent us back to a day of action more than a month later 
(that of October 1). That said, when these lines are written we do not 
know if this call will be followed and if it would allow a more 
offensive phase to begin.
More fundamentally, the deliberately electoralist orientation of the 
large trade union organizations is not new. Their objective is to make 
people believe that the demands of the oppressed must only pass through 
the channels of these organizations and not find an autonomous form. The 
risk of immediately calling for demonstrations and strikes (in July or 
early September after Barnier's appointment) made them take the risk of 
being "overwhelmed". To avoid this, they must appear as our essential 
representatives. And there, the difference with Macron would certainly 
be real for the trade union organizations if the NFP came to power. Not 
in terms of results for the proletariat, but the leadership of the union 
organizations would certainly no longer be despised as they were under 
Macron. If the leaders of the union organizations are currently allowing 
left-wing politicians to regain a form of legitimacy, they hope for the 
opposite: that the future government invites them to negotiate and drops 
a few mini-reforms under so-called union pressure. The days of 
mobilization are only a means of demonstrating its ability to control 
discontent, and therefore to prevent any form of autonomous radicalism 
from emerging.
So, the objective is to recreate new illusions in a future left-wing 
government... which will nevertheless only do in the future what it has 
always done in the past: demoralize people by betraying the hopes placed 
in it. Above all, setting a left-wing government as a goal ties the 
hands of the oppressed. Since such a government is not being put in 
place, people experience it as a defeat. This is exactly what the 
capitalists and the bourgeois political apparatuses want: to move from a 
feeling of victory in July to a feeling of defeat and, the bourgeoisie 
hopes, to resignation. This works because, above all, the union 
organizations have succeeded in discrediting social struggles. The 
failure of the pensions movement, for example, is presented not as a 
strategic error by the inter-union, but as confirmation that it is 
impossible for a social movement to win because "political power" would 
be too strong. S. Binet, for example, explained to the strikers at MA 
France, the last automobile factory in Seine-Saint-Denis placed in 
receivership: "if we don't have the government's help to reestablish the 
balance of power... we won't be able to do it." They want to lock us 
into the certainty that the fight does not pay, that we can only 
mobilize through elections and ultimately that only union leaders, being 
our representatives legitimized by this system, can obtain progress 
through negotiations with the political power and that if the latter is 
"left-wing".

The potential of the moment
If we are going to refer to the Popular Front, we might as well take the 
best of it: the offensive strike of 1936. Let us recall that the strikes 
of 1936 did not accompany the Popular Front government. They began 
following the legislative elections of 1936, the second round of which 
took place on May 3, before the government was set up on June 5 (there 
was legally a month between the elections and the taking office of the 
head of government). It is in this period of power vacuum that the 
working class will intervene massively, and as soon as the Popular Front 
government is established it will seek to stop the strike, including the 
famous phrase of June 11th by Thorez, leader of the PCF "You have to 
know how to end a strike as soon as satisfaction has been obtained". We 
are absolutely not in the same situation as 1936 which had seen workers' 
combativeness gain in confidence in the months preceding May-June 1936. 
However, there is currently no stable government facing us, we should 
take advantage of it. The director of IPSOS warned on August 30th in Le 
Monde "The risk, in this deleterious climate, is that the French believe 
that voting is useless and that the protest will take place in the 
streets". Indeed, the current political decay can open breaches. If we 
are going to mobilize, we might as well do it by ourselves and for 
ourselves, and not for the NFP politicians. We must encourage all the 
struggles that emerge locally, encourage general meetings, debates, etc. 
so that we can take our fate into our own hands independently of the 
political and union apparatuses serving the bourgeoisie. This does not 
mean doing it against grassroots unionists, but on the contrary 
motivating such sincere activists to the need to go beyond the current 
political game. That said, if there were a real movement of anger 
against Macron on the political field ("Macron is betraying our desire 
for change") it could be positive if such anger went beyond the 
framework of the NFP. Such radicalism seems unlikely at the moment, but 
you never know what a very confused political context can generate. The 
objective would be to go beyond the game of political parties, and 
therefore perhaps to be able to graft onto us a section of the RN 
electorate that is also angry. Because let us remember, apart from 
struggles that would give our camp a taste for victory, the current 
social and political situation risks capturing anger through the RN 
program which appears radical, simple and effective: attacking 
foreigners rather than capitalists who appear unassailable.

RV, 09/09/2024

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4266
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