8-30-05, 2:45 pm

Neoliberalism, a strategy of finance capital, was implemented in France at the beginning of the 1980s. Circumstances were that it was not imposed by a Reagan or a Thatcher, but with a French touch by successive “socialist” and right-wing governments. Marked by measures of financial austerity, debt restructuring and anti-inflation measures, the neoliberal turning point was resolutely and definitively adopted by the Socialist Party (PS) controlled government in 1984. In 1986, the right wing regained power and accelerated the speed of the project. In the mid-1990s, the socialists were returned to power and confirmed their support for neoliberalism by privatizing more than the right had done before, reducing the differences between the two parties to rhetorical nuances. PS affirmed its role as a government party as essential to the ruling classes as its right-wing parties, imposing the destruction of social services on paralyzed trade unions. Thus, it is this France, dominated by big capital, subjected to neoliberalism and aligned behind the US, that French leaders from among the right wing and the socialists dragged into the European Union building process, itself liberal and pro-US since its origins. This Europe, which has been under construction since 1957 without the consent of its citizens, is that of big capitalists. The capitalists knew this when they made the “call of 100,” an invitation to French capital to support passage of the Constitution treaty (published in the arch-conservative, anti-working class newspaper, Le Figaro). The florets of French capitalism were present: Total (oil), BNP-Paribas (banking), L’Oréal (cosmetics), Schneider (machines), Dassault (armament and media), etc. In 2004, Total made the highest profits ever recorded by a French firm and laid off thousands of workers. BNP-Paribas posted €4.7 billion of profits; L’Oréal €3.63 billion. If Schneider reached only profits of €600 million, it paid off its shareholders with the biggest rise in dividends and its employees and subcontractors with outsourcing. At the same time, French private sector wages increased by only 0.3 percent. One worker out of six earns the minimum wage, one million people live with the “minimum income of insertion” (unemployment compensation) and seven million are officially poor. These inequalities are those of a France whose leaders have abandoned it to plundering by finance capital.

It is against this backdrop that the French said “no” on the May 29th referendum on the European Union Constitution treaty, or the constitutionalization of neolibearlism in Europe. It is a “no” which can be seen as a victory for all the workers in the world.

This referendum reminded the owners and their politico-media servants that the people exist. They have changed, but are still here. The “no” was a class vote: 80 percent of blue-collar workers, 67 percent of white-collar workers, 70 percent of small farmers, 64 percent of civil servants, more than 50 percent of craftsmen, small shopkeepers and intermediate professions, 66 percent of the poor households, 71 percent of unemployed workers, etc., voted “no.” Young people from all backgrounds massively mobilized for the “no.” This vote is the product of the consciousness of the working classes, the first victory of their resistance and their unity against neoliberalism since the great strikes of 1995.

As a reward for their rebellion, the people were attacked with insults from the defeated, humiliated elites. One accused the people of being racist, saying that those who called for a “no” joined with the extreme right-wing of the National Front (FN) party head by Le Pen. That the “no” collected votes of the extreme right and that part of the population was manipulated by words of hatred is a fact. But let us keep in mind the essential point.

The political influence of Le Pen’s party is not due to the racism of the French people, even less to its “fascization.” It is due to the reaction of an extremist fraction of the bourgeoisie contrary to the popular beliefs adopted and practiced by young people, be they French or immigrant, to build together in a spirit of tolerance a multicolored, melting and métisse France made of all races and nationalities. Most French people support the concept of fraternity – contrary to the neoliberal model of a globalized apartheid. Le Pen, on the other hand, defends the interests of a bourgeoisie hostile to the supranational powers.

Originally a tool of the PS eager to break the influence of the Communist Party, Le Pen’s party has escaped from their hands. It thrives on the nauseous manure of the history of French bourgeoisie, that of slavery and colonization, collaboration and imperialism. Today, the FN has influence in the French government (the Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy leans towards Le Pen’s ideology and is considered a potential successor to President Chirac). The ideology of the FN is venom that the ruling classes injects in the veins of those hurt by neoliberalism. Its most effective antidote is the working people of the cities, the youth of the popular suburbs, mixing French and foreign workers, unemployed and undocumented – the advanced guard helping France in its fight against racism. The reaction of the ruling class after the referendum shows the fictitious character of French bourgeois democracy. Almost all of the leading political parties supported the European neoliberal project and are suffering in the polls as a result. President Chirac with a 24 percent favorable rating in June; Sarkozy at the head the Chirac’s right-wing Union for a Popular Movement party (UMP); Hollande, leader of PS (with a popularity index now lower than those of the Communist and Trotskyist leaders); Giscard d’Estaing, former French President and initiator of the constitutional project, lost in the dungeon. The propagandists of the misinformation media, almost all mouthpieces of the capitalists added to the reaction. The editor of the French right-wing newspaper, Le Monde, treated the people who voted “no” as idiots, after publishing a string of abuses fired off by former leftists Daniel Cohn-Bendit from Germany and Antonio Negri from Italy.

The shake up of the government after the failure of the referendum reveals more maneuvering for the 2007 presidential election. On one hand Chirac’s appointment of Dominique de Villepin suggests an appeal to the left with calls for a fight against “social fracture,” Chirac’s old slogan against right-wing extremism. On the other, Sarkozy appeals to the right wing with hysterical calls for restoring security. But both of them converge towards more neoliberalism, attacks on the labor legislation, more repression and expulsions of immigrants, and, in spite of appearances, more submission to the United States – at least on the economic level. In addition to Sarkozy, Chirac appointed new pro-Americans as ministers of Economy, Budget and Foreign Trade. They claim to help their country and do nothing but serve their class. More recently, we learned that a Franco-American military base, with CIA agents collaborating with the French secret services, has been in activity for three years in Paris.

If democracy for a huge majority of the French is limited to a small outing to the polling station one Sunday a year to take one’s place in the queue in silence, to shake one’s head at the call of their name in silence, to slip an envelope into the ballot-box in silence, and to go back home in silence, with nothing changing, this is nothing much. French democracy currently is for shareholders, its ethics that of financial markets, its pluralism that of two “single parties” (PS and UMP) who carry out the same policy of dominant capital against us by force. The bourgeoisie has the power and does not intend to release it. We do not live in democracy. Is it a form of dictatorship?

There are positive lessons to be drawn for the progressive left from the victory of the “no.” One of the turning points of the referendum campaign was the lucid and firm expression of the militants of the left-wing General Confederation of Labor (CGT), whose direction initially favored the “yes,” like many European trade-union leaders, but came to firmly oppose the neoliberal project of the Constitution. When CGT truly represents the interests of its members and all workers, the trade union can count on their mobilization and devotion. CGT’s experience shows that the claim that “60 million trade unionists are for the ‘yes’ in Europe” is a lie, because the European trade-union movements that support neoliberalism, by treason, opportunism or weakness, do not represent their members or the working class.

The French Communist Party (PCF) ultimately made the right choice of supporting the “no,” in total agreement with its members and supporters. The result: 98 percent of the Communists voted “no” on May 29, the highest proportion of all the French parties. In the PS, on the contrary, pro-Constitution party leaders used procedure to narrowly gain the party’s official endorsement of a “yes” vote, but the party’s members voted “no” by 59 percent.

Thus the rebuilding of a fighting left will have to be radically democratic, listening to the people and at the service of active, participating and mobilized members and supporters, without aping bourgeois electoral games. During the campaign, the PCF represented the leftist force with the largest organizational and logistical role against the treaty. Without its local framework and its concrete support brought to all the other progressive components of the “no” campaign, the victory would undoubtedly not have been possible. The victory of “no” campaign is the opening of an historical opportunity for unity of the French left – perhaps for the very first time in our country.

Nevertheless, this process of convergence and building unity obviously presents a number of risks. The first one is that of prematurely making radical demands (such as for Chirac’s resignation or the dissolution of the National Assembly) that are beyond the capabilities of the left to win.

A second risk is the potential for derailing the momentum gained by the victory if the Communist Party were to form a new electoral alliance with the PS for the 2007 elections. While such a strategy makes it possible to save a handful of members of Parliament for the Communists, it undermines the force the Communist Party won in the campaign against the treaty. The same would happen in case of similar alliance between the Trotskyists of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) and the “dissidents” of the PS, led by former socialist Prime Minister Fabius, who the elites are calling the leader of “no” campaign, who gave the country as a present 20 years ago to the neoliberal speculators and whose international vision does not exceed support to extreme-right-wing Zionists and Cuban-Venezuelan counter-revolutionaries. Humiliated in 2002 with the defeat of PS leader Jospin against Chirac and Le Pen, divided by narrow personal ambitions and adrift from its base, the PS had placed its pawns both on the “yes” (Hollande, leader of the PS) and on the “no” (Fabius, number two leader of PS), so that the horizon of its political project remains neoliberalism and nothing else.

The third risk is more serious. It is the potential unity of Chirac’s right-wing party with the extreme-right-wing (to fight against immigration in particular), which would lead the PS to accelerate even more its evolution towards anti-working class positions. For the moment, without great leaders and still too weak, progressive forces have not been able to prevent these potential risks from becoming realities.

Some observers have praised the contribution of citizens’ movements that aligned themselves against reactionary parties and collaborationist trade unions (including on the left). Remember the two best organized “movements” in France are those of the bourgeoisie in power: the “Union for a popular Movement” (Chirac’s right-wing party) and the “Movement of the enterprises of France,” the big business association. For progressives of all countries, the urgent priority is to organize ourselves, to gather together and to extend our militant base. This implies a strong rejection of “social-liberalism,” which is nothing other than neoliberal drifts inside traditional “socialist” parties and trade-union movements. It is advisable to prolong, multiply, widen, deepen the open discussions and the concrete fights that made possible the victory of the “no,” to build little by little solidarity among workers actively in the struggle. It is also necessary, thanks to the joint and solidarity mobilizations of the peoples of Europe, to bring more pressure to oppose the continuation of the neoliberal destruction across Europe, as well as the attempts to neutralize the French “no” by concerted reactions of European ruling classes who are committed to submitting their countries to dominant of finance capitalism and US militarism and imperialism. The road to reappropriate our language (Marxism) will be long, to read again the history of our fights here and elsewhere, to reinforce exchanges between workers’ organizations of the North, to revive true and deep solidarity with the South and its peoples in struggle (in Iraq, Palestine, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba…), to transform our criticisms of neoliberalism and war into concrete, efficient, radical proposals of rupture with capitalism and with imperialism. The democratic Europe we will build, one of social rights and new solidarity, will be socialist and internationalist or it will not be. Because this is not the form of the system – neoliberalism – that causes the problems, but its essence – capitalism, which is still a system of exploitation and oppression, alienation and destruction, inequality and injustice. Even if the present situation calls for a rupture in France, to admit that we are not the day before a revolution does not mean that we must give up neither the objective of a revolution nor the purpose of the construction of socialism in our country. This long-term goal, as well as that of a social and democratic project for Europe, is to be thought and promoted practically within the framework of the fight for socialism on a worldwide scale. The French “no” is a step, modest, but real, in this direction.