The popular front experiment in France
Triumph changes to anger, disillusionment
17 September 2024
The current governmental crisis in France stems back to the European elections of June 2024. There was a substantial growth in the vote for right wing parties and a collapse in the vote for traditional capitalist parties. In France President Macron found his party achieving 15% of the vote, with the far right on 30%.
When Macron called a snap national election, the results were even worse for him. The left groups formed a popular front and gained the largest section of the vote in the first round and the largest number of seats in the second round. However, the cost of victory was a vote deal with Macron that enabled him to recover seats. He was then able to reject a technocratic compromise prime minister proposed by the NPF and appoint Michel Barnier, a eurocrat and right-wing politician whose party won only a small proportion of the vote, as prime minister.
Up to 300,000 people demonstrated across France, denouncing the election as stolen and as a coup by Macron and saying that a Barnier government would be completely dependent on the National Rally party, whose defeat was the justification for the popular front strategy in the first place.
However, this outcome was entirely predictable and defeat and disillusionment a standard outcome of the popular front strategy.
The basic ideas of the popular front are the overwhelming threat of fascism and the strength of numbers in opposing this threat.
One weakness of this position is that it is often very difficult to tell where Fascism leaves off and capitalism and imperialism begin. Previous failures often involve right wing groups switching side when the confrontation reaches its climax.
In fact, the threat of fascism, although real, is different today. The main reason for the utter rejection of this ideology is that it uproots all the “democratic” elements of capitalism in favour of the use of brute force to smash the working class and oppressed. The modern European movements operate within a parliamentary environment and tend to focus on traditional family values and hatred of migrants. To a great extent they trail behind the capitalist parties rather than lead them.
By focusing on the threat of fascism, the popular frontists divert from immediate attacks on the working class. For example, Macron pushed through a cut in pension rights without any democratic vote. Some issues, such as the state attacks on migrants and the drive towards escalation in the proxy war in Ukraine, fell out of the discussion entirely.
The claim is that the NPF was a workers’ popular front because it was an assembly of socialist parties. This isn’t true. The Socialist Party is a thoroughly pro-capitalist party that has led some of the major attacks on the working class. In the second round of voting the front stood aside in favour of Macron’s candidates, making it an alliance between capitalism and socialism.
This was the road to disaster. Capitalism will support fascism over socialism any day of the week. The decision to stand aside boosted the weak capitalist party and weakened the NPF when it might have achieved an overall majority.
After the election these
weaknesses played out. The Socialist Party and others put forward a technocratic
candidate, weakening their already weak programme. Macron refused, instead
putting forward Barnier, a minority right wing candidate. It is evident
that he can only rule with the support of the Rassemblement National (RN)
party of Le Pen, which means that they can write the programme of the new
administration without having to take responsibility for it. At the same
time Barnier has offered a government of national unity, likely to break
the fragile unity of the NPF. The RN group can look forward to a
government in which the left will be humiliated and a capitalist government
will implement unpopular decisions, leaving the ground open for a RN party
government in the next election.
So, the anti-fascist alliance
is likely to lead to something close to fascism!
What was the alternative? Many argued that the movement should have been based on the streets rather than parliament, but an extra parliamentary movement cannot be conjured from nowhere.
The basic problem is that the majority of the French left, as with the Western left generally, support a programme of reformism. They propose a series of reforms thar will be supported by Parliament. These proposals are presented in moral terms and do not engage with reality. The concrete demand is that we tax the rich to pay for reform.
But as Macron has pointed out, the French national debt is over one trillion. So, given that the rich will not agree to being taxed in the first place, even if they could the policy would not be effective because the vast majority of the wealth is in control of the means of production.
The foundation of a socialist programme would be expropriation. We would not tax capital, we would seize the means of production. This would be resisted by global imperialism, so we would also have to repudiate the national debt.
The leftists reject this on the grounds that that it is unrealistic and unpopular, but their pragmatism led to the disaster of the national front.
If they want a transitional demand, one would think that French support for a costly war drive in Ukraine would be a good start. Unfortunately, the leftists have moved so far from socialism that even this is beyond them.
The French problem is the problem of leftism across Europe. Without a programme aimed at the destruction of capital they fade into reformism and liberalism.
There is a reason for this. The collapse of the USSR and national liberation struggles, of social democracy and the trade union leadership, has led to a major retreat of the working class.
It is the chief characteristic of socialism that we do not believe that the workers will go quietly into the night and that the chief task of socialists is to prepare for the coming revival, not to accommodate the dead end of capitalism and imperialism.