Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste likely to split today.

The Nouveau parti anticapitaliste (NPA) is one the larger radical left groups in France. Though with 2,000 members at present it is smaller than it was at its launch in 2009 when it had over 9,200. The new party was created from the groundswell of support for anti-capitalist movements in the new millenium, and the electoral support for the candidate of the Trotskyist Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) Olivier Besancenot, who won 4,08%, up to 1 and a half million votes in the first round of the 2007 French Presidential elections. The ‘postier’ (postie) Oliver and the Ligue enjoyed sympathy broader than the ideas of Trotskyism. The LCR’s open-minded Marxism, led by figures such Daniel Bensaïd (1946 – 2010) and Michael Löwy, and activism, won the group, founded after the Mai évènements in 1974, the respect of generations of leftists. Its leader Alain Krivine (1941 – 2022), a MEP between 1999 – 2002, was one of the best-known and respected figures on the French left. Influential figures in France, such as the founder of Mediapart, Edwy Plenel, began his political career as a journalist for its paper Rouge.

During the 1970s the Fourth International (FI), to which the LCR belonged, had an impact in many countries. In Britain the International Marxist Group (IMG), one of whose factions went in to staff Ken Livingstone’s London Mayoral office, was closely linked the LCR and part of the FI. The Belgian theoretician and FI leader, Ernest Mandel, who had participated in the Paris May protests, influenced many on the international left. This included New Left Review. Editor, Perry Anderson who, today backing Brexit, and announcing that “Westminster is vastly superior to this lacquered synarchy.” (the EU) in the 1970s was a believer in the possibility of Mandel’s vision of revolutionary dual power, “an adult vision of socialism on a world scale”. (Arguments within English Marxism 1980) Less surprising was the affiliation of figures such as fellow-Brexiteer Tariq Ali, whose past IMG membership and familiarity with Mandel is translated into the character, “Ezra Einstein ” in his farce Redemption (1990). Dealing with the collapse of Official Communism “In his own person Ezra Einstein combined some of the qualities of a Old Testament prophet with the defects of a New Testament apostle, whose task was to interpret the words of the saviours in changing conditions.” How we chortled!

At its creation the NPA hoped to express the anti-capitalist, alter-globalisation and left green movements of the new millenium, unite much of the French radical left, and to make a mark on the French political map. It has failed to occupy the political space on the left that it hoped to. To cut a long story short Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Parti de gauche, (PdG), from the formation of the Front de Gauche (FdG) in 2012, whose alliance reached out to the French Communists (PCF), small democratic leftist-green groups and parts of the NPA itself, to the creation of La France insoumise (LFI), 2016, has conquered that terrain. Mélenchon got 21,95% of the vote in the first round of 2022 Presidential elections, coming third, and LFI, as part of the left alliance, NUPES, now has 69 deputies in the National Assembly (25,7% of the ballot). Phillipe Poutou of the NPA got 0,76% and came 11th. While not joining the NUPES they backed Danielle Simonnet elected in Paris and a number of other candidates, “in the more than 70 constituencies where NPA committees exist, this support ranges from a simple public call to vote for the local NUPES candidate to the participation of anti-capitalist activists in the common campaign. ” (International Viewpoint)

This Saturday La France insoumise held what it calls a “une assemblée représentative”, its version of a National Conference, this weekend. Not elected but selected by a process of “representation” run by Jean-luc Mélenchon’s closest cadres, it decided to endorse Manuel Bompard at its head, somebody the less than enthusiastic would call his ‘”heir apparent”. He prefers “consensus” to the tiresome business of internal elections and votes. The “gazeuse”, effervescent, movement-rally-party, is bubbling over about this. Many of the LFI deputies most in the public eye, François Ruffin, Clémentine Autain, (who has called for democratic structures in the body) Alexis Corbière, Raquel Garrido and Eric Coquerel, with independent political bases, known (and often liked) on the wider European left, were not invited to the fete. They are relegated to a “political council” could which will meet, sometime, occasionally. Not pleased, some of those excluded have called this a conseil théodule, which might be very loosely translated as a committee in charge of paper clips.(LFI choisit une direction ultra-resserrée et suscite la colère) The decision to create a more solid LFI infrastructure and permit local groups to communicate and organise together, has not dampened criticism. It is suggested that Jean-Luc Mélenchon – who is no longer in Parliament – continues to hold, tightly, the ‘left populist’ LFI in his hands.

It is its position towards LFI that the NPA’s current leadership strategy is most in question. Le Monde reports this morning “The outgoing leadership, led by Philippe Poutou (platform B, 48% of the activists’ votes), intends, in his own words, “to carry out campaigns with LFI when [it] sees fit, without being called a ‘reformist’.” It uses the concept of “left of struggle, gauche de combat” and defends the idea that convergences with LFI are possible. Platform C (45%), bringing together several factions/currents, led in particular by the postman Gaël Quirante and the rail worker Damien Scali, aims to build ” organisations independent of the bourgeoisie but also of all shades of the ‘institutional left”, including LFI” . Philippe Poutou believes that these two tendencies, according to him already de facto autonomous,“can no longer live together in the same organisation”.

For more details on the positions of the tendencies see: Contributions des plateformes pour le 5e congrès du NPA, Plateforme A : Ni marasme ni scission, un congrès pour la refondation ! Plateforme B : Unitaire et révolutionnaire, un NPA utile face aux ravages du capitalisme. Plateforme C : « Actualité et urgence de la révolution » : pour refuser l’éclatement du NPA.

“But the left wing of the party does not intend to abandon it. “There is no reason justifying the separation , replied Saturday Damien Scali, former spokesman for Philippe Poutou in the presidential election. Whatever our leanings or faction, we are all the NPA. “ Split or dissolution, by the end of the congress, Sunday evening, departures seem inevitable. Philippe Poutou and Olivier Besancenot are already announcing a press conference to say so, on Sunday afternoon. This would be the third split since the creation of the party fourteen years ago, out from, largely, the historical legacy of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR), after the departure of cadres to the Front de gauche (FdG) in 2012, and that of the current led by Anasse Kazib, Permanent Revolution, in 2021.”

The NPA has influence in the  Solidaires Unitaires Démocratiques (SUD) unions, and unlike, say, the British TUSC or Communist Party of Britain, has a few local councillors, notably in Bordeaux where Philippe Poutou headed a list, “Bordeaux en luttes”, with the backing of LFI and the area’s Gilets Jaunes (at present, according to hostile reports, in internal difficulty: Entre Bordeaux en lutte et Philippe Poutou, un divorce consommé). It would seem probable that Platform B is already eyeing up closer links with figures such Clémentine Autain, with whom the NPA has already had ties, not least in that her own organisation Ensemble! contains those who were La Gauche anticapitaliste (GA), the above split from the NPA to the FdG in  2012 (plate-forme « B », 40% of Conference votes in 2011), and has according to reports, observer status in the Fourth International.

Monday

Update: on the Plateforme C. – L’Étincelle, Anticapitalisme & révolution, Socialisme ou barbarie et Démocratie révolutionnaire.

In their text, they analyse differently the dominant position now occupied by LFI on the left: “This electoral breakthrough of the FI and the rebalancing within the institutional “left” in favour of the FI do not change our fundamental objective which is to build organisations independent of the bourgeoisie but also of all shades of the “institutional left”, including the FI. Nevertheless Ellesse denied a taking a line that would lead to political isolation (logic d’isolation) , taking up the Leninist formula “march separately, strike together” , considering that common action is possible with LFI in the street (i.e. mass protests).

Most of these fractions, however, favour a rapprochement with Lutte Ouvrière (LO) – L’Étincelle is moreover the result of a split from LO in 2008, as well as Démocratie Révolutionnaire, which had joined the LCR at the end of the 1990s. “If there is a front to be made, it is with all the forces of the far left, from LO to the CCR [ Revolutionary Communist Current – editor’s note]  “ , thus defends Maurice Amzallay, retired railway worker and activist at L’Étincelle . “Creating a common pole with LO would be a beacon for those who want to give a revolutionary perspective to their anger” , abounds his comrade Damien Scali.

À l’extrême gauche, le NPA s’est autodétruit DEJEAN Mathieu.

Socialisme ou Barbarie says that “part of the outgoing leadership of the NPA chose to leave the congress before any vote, including the decisive orientation votes, to carry out alone a policy towards NUPES and its main component LFI..”

This was on France-Inter this morning:

"Le Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste se scinde en deux à l'issue de son cinquième congrès" https://t.co/GBMpIKNLkG]

— 123 INFO FRANCE (@123_INFO_FR) December 12, 2022