Crisis in La France insoumise bubbles over: what now for ‘left populism’?
LFI ‘Gazeuse’ organisation bubbles over. Autain “La France insoumise must be democratised.”
The left alliance, NUPES, Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale, is, with 151 MPs (out of 577), the biggest opposition bloc in the French Parliament, the Assemblée National. It united on programme of Green politics (a rich section, ranging from tacking climate change, a path to 100% renewable energy, to farming) raising the minimum wage level, a “révolution fiscale’ to shake up taxation, a price freeze on basics, lowering the retirement age to 60, tackling poverty giving young people financial independence, dealing with the housing crisis, expanding the public health service, to thorough-going democratic reform in a new, 6th Republic, a strong defence of secularism (laïcité), reform of the police and security services, to measures to promote equality and fight against all forms of discrimination. Many more ideas are offered. The document Programme partagé de gouvernement de la Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociales, 92 pages in print, is clear, and inspiring. It merits reading and re-reading.
NUPES was, and has not become, a ‘left populist’ alliance. During the election campaign it was projected that Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France insoumise (LFI), would, on the strength of his score in the April Presidential elections, 22% of the vote, in the second round, third place, would be able to demand of President Macron that he be appointed Prime Minster. In his early ‘seventies, he did not stand as an MP (the constitution allows the head of state to appoint a PM from outside the National Assembly).
But the NUPES was not The People. It is an electoral and Parliamentary alliance of the left, including the Socialist Party (31 MPs), the Communist Party (12 MPs) Mélenchon’s LFI (the largest group, 75 deputies), Europe Écologie Les Verts, (EELV, 17MPs, whose new leader Marine Tondelier wishes to change the name to the more intelligible, Les Ecologistes), and smaller parties, including Génération·s, founded by the socialist Green former 2017 PS Presidential candidate Benoît Hamon (3 MPs) and the ‘Lambertist’ Trotskyists of the Parti ouvrier indépendant. (POI – 1 MP).
LFI and other radical sections of NUPES have supported strikers, protests, and other actions in civil society. This autumn they backed marches on the cost of living (“contre la vie chère”) and climate change. Trade unions, working on the principle of independence from political parties that dates back to the revolutionary syndicalism of the 1906 Charte d’Amiens, do not, even from their left flank, always appreciate direct political interventions. The left-wing (formerly largely Communist) CGT federation has expressed annoyance at its terrain being trampled on by Mélenchon’s initiatives. But one cannot accuse NUPES of neglecting extra-parliamentary activity. Internationalist initiatives, have included protests against the repression of democratic movement by the Islamic Republic of Iran (Communiqué de l’intergroupe de la NUPES #FemmeVieLiberté : Stop aux exécutions arbitraires !). Some left MPs have, in cooperation with union figures and the independent radical left, recently backed a declaration and demonstration in solidarity with Ukraine.
NUPES is appealing, particularly to our European left whose make-up, in different paries and groups, is often very close. You could say that any section of our left, from social democrats, democratic socialists, Greens, red-greens, diverse forms of Marxism, has its place in its ranks. They seem to have fitted in. If they have had difficulties they are shared elsewhere. Many of us are glad they established themselves with national strength when it looked a few years ago as if the French left would go the way of the Italian, departures for the liberal centre, style Macron and no left MPs at all, or America-style, the US Democrats, and an insignificant radical fringe..
NUPES, and specifically La France insoumise, has run into difficulties in different areas.
Adrien Quatennens, recently sentenced for acts of violence against his wife, came out of the court and immediately denounced a ‘lynching by the media’ and efforts to relativise the case. The case, posted on this Blog, has significance not only because it involved an MP caught out for domestic violence. The deputy was a leading figure in LFI and close to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. If suspended for 4 months from their Parliamentary group he still plans to return to the National Assembly in January. Feminists, and some left representatives, have denounced what they feel, rightly, is the feeble response of the official LFI to Quatennens’ actions.
The way LFI functions, as a ‘non-party but a ‘movement’ has been highlighted not just by this, which some consider leniency marked by personal closeness to the leadership of one former MP for the 4th Constituency of the Bouches-du-Rhône, but the appointement of a new co-ordinating body to run the organisation. Alexis Corbière, whose closeness to Mélenchon dates back two decades, a veteran of the French radical left (stints in student leadership for the Lambertists, 5 years in the Ligue Communiste révolutionnaire, LCR, before joining the Socialists in 1998, resigning from the PS, with Mélenchon in 2008), member of his hard-core Parti de Gauche, and a strong, to put it mildly, republican secularist) announced his “radical disagreement” with the LFI’s new leadership “J’ai un radical désaccord avec la nouvelle direction de LFI“.
The main issue is that this body, which ’emerged’ in a mysterious way (“une méthode que j’ai moi-même du mal à saisir.”) at a conference selected (not voted for) from LFI people, under the new titular head, Manuel Bompard, with no alternative ‘big beasts’ or different standpoints . This consensus decsion-making, degré zero, only selecting those loyal and in consensual agreement with one Jean-Luc.
Well known and respected Left MPs, also excluded from the leadership, such as Clémentine Autain, have joined the public critics. She agrees with many points made by Corbière:
Yesterday Autain, who has a degree of independent assured with her roots in the Ensemble! group (that consists of radical leftists, greens, self-management and anti-capitalist tendencies, site here), launched this broadside.
Clémentine Autain, députée LFI : « La mise au placard du pluralisme n’est pas possible » Journal du Dimanche.
Pour la députée La France insoumise Clémentine Autain, « un parti ne se renforce pas en s’épurant ». [A reference to a phrase used by as a legend at the start of Lenin’s What is to be Done?, “le parti se renforce en s’épurant “a party becomes stronger by purging itself. “From a letter of Lassalle to Marx, of June 24, 1852] Elle estime également que les propos d’Adrien Quatennens, condamné pour violences conjugales, « vont rouvrir le débat » sur sa réintégration dans le groupe LFI à l’Assemblée”.
For the La France insoumise MP Clémentine Autain, “a party does not strengthen itself by purifying itself”. She also believes that the words of Adrien Quatennens, convicted of domestic violence, “will reopen the debate” on his reintegration into the LFI group in the Assembly.
The story is all over the French media: 20 Minutes.
Deputy La France insoumise (LFI) for Seine-Saint-Denis, Clémentine Autain spoke this Sunday in the Sunday newspaper concerning the new organisation of the party, announced last week, and the Adrien Quattenens affair .
“The decision to compose a leadership that is inward-looking is creating a major crisis. […] Shelving pluralism is not possible. We have a problem of democracy in the life of the movement”… “To calm the situation and guarantee the unity of the movement, we need to overhaul our organisation”. And to appeal to Jean-Luc Mélenchon . “I think [ Jean-Luc Mélenchon ] has a role to play [in this internal crisis] to put an end to it”.
Clémentine Autain fustige « l’indécence » d’Adrien Quatennens « qui sape la crédibilité de LFI » Huffington Post.
These difficulties were not unforeseen. The structure of LFI, half-US style pressure group business model, half short lived electoral rally, is, critics have long alleged, not fit for purpose. Mélenchon and those close to him have claimed that their ‘gazeuse’ (as in eau gazeuse, sparkling water, in this context, effervescent) organisation has avoided the old Parti Socialiste divisions of long-standing formal currents, each run by little barons. But the new forms is not able to deal with bubbling political life.
The last few days show they neither deals with the needs of a mass organisation with a large Parliamentary body nor grass-roots democracy. They are ill-adpated to new conditions. The underlying pluralism of NUPES is deeper than that of the late 90s Gauche Plurielle, which aligned highly structured pre-existing parties. Today this reflects a diversity of relatively new political movements (LFI is an obvious case, with Autain coming from and relating to the radical left beyond Mélenchon, but there are also bodies like Génération·s), new individuals, politicians coming to maturity who are not deferential to a Guide, and figures on the ground councillors and activists, who are making their own way. New MPs are unlikely to remain stewarded within its hazy structures nor appreciate being excluded from decision-making when it suits the managing directors. Purging parties does not work with elected representatives – they will not lose their seats, the voters chose them – nor fit with calls for a new more democratic republic. One idea of ‘left populism’, federating the people around a charismatic chief, in the shape of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has reached its limit.
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See this analysis from the left, by the London based Phillipe Marlière.
« L’autocratie de la France insoumise et le discrédit de la gauche », par Philippe Marlière Nouvel Obs.
La France insoumise (LFI) is going through a crisis which, once again, put into question the foundations of its organisation, in particular the absence of democracy within it. The previous major crisis occurred in 2019.
Un parti personnel et autocratique
It has long been established that LFI is a personal party (created by Jean-Luc Mélenchon to serve his political objectives in the presidential election), that the ex-socialist rejected contested democracy in favour of a gaseous” organisation without membership, without elections of the leader and the members of the management, without pluralism, without the possibility of proposing to the debate and to the vote alternative motions to those of the cadres without the groups at the grassroots having the capacity to develop politically.”
“The movement is not “gaseous” , that is to say based on a flexible, light and reputedly effective organisation, but foggy, that is to say voluntarily opaque in order to cover up the tracks and allow the Commander to what pleases him when it so suits him.”
Tendance Coatesy 
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