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Morning Star on French Left and Sarah Wagenknecht.
Nick Wright: Tumultuous times for the left in Europe
The Morning Star, independent of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and published by the co-op, carried this story yesterday by a top Tendance Coatesy contributor.
(note I have added the vexing absent accent in the article original for Mélenchon)
“LAST weekend saw big upsets on the left in France and Germany. The economic crisis that goes with Europe’s submission to the US strategy of tension with Russia — with its openly proclaimed objective of limiting Chinese influence — expresses itself in a political crisis that has inevitably drawn in the left.”
Despite this bizarre beginning, though perhaps Wright knows something about French left politics and its relationship to the US “strategy of tension” that has escaped other commentateurs, he makes some reasonable points about the crisis in the French left alliance, NUPES, Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale. This brings together La France insoumise, Communists, Socialists, Greens and some small parties and has 151 MPs in the National Assembly, rather more than the MPs from Wrights own party, the CPB.
Now NUPES is falling apart.
The French Communist Party (PCF) has concluded that NUPES is at an impasse and has called for the opening of “a new page in the coming together of the left and ecologists.” The objective is to constitute a “new popular front” capable of being in the majority.
Among the factors leading up to the division (note this particular split extended right through the LFI) was the reinstatement in the parliamentary group of La France Insoumise (LFI), the biggest component of NUPES, of the deputy Adrien Quatennens, an ally of LFI leader Mélenchon, despite his conviction for domestic violence and against the opposition of of many, including feminist deputies.
In the labour movement the LFI in general and Mélenchon in particular are criticised for the disrespect they displayed towards the unions during the powerful pensions protests which earlier this year so dramatically weakened President Macron’s standing.
This is also the case, and the Tendance reported on this in details – noting for example the stand of the PCF in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre where the rioting began.
“More immediately Mélenchon’s tone-deaf take on the urban violence which followed the death of teenager Nahel Merzouk — shot by a police officer during a traffic stop — has caused an open breach.”
So far so accurate, and this Blog reproduced their statements at the time.
In the judgement of the PCF, this stance failed to connect with the growing sense that people living in working-class neighbourhoods were those most affected by the violence.
These tensions were heightened over recent days by divisions over the Hamas military assault on the Israeli border settlements.
Mélenchon’s failure to characterise the Hamas action as terrorism resulted in Green leader Marine Tondelier arguing that he had “removed all credibility from the left coalition,” while Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure called for a “break with the Mélenchon method.”
In an argument with with Fabien Roussel, Mélenchon compared the PCF leader to Jacques Doriot, a pre-war PCF renegade who led a fascist formation.
In a posting Mélenchon said: “History repeats itself, there is a Doriot in Roussel.”
For those who have not heard of Doriot, he was a leading Communist, deeply rooted in the working class Parisian suburb of Saint Denis who became this,
Jacques Doriot (French: [ʒak dɔʁjo]; 26 September 1898 – 22 February 1945) was a French politician, initially communist, later fascist, before and during World War II.
In 1936, after his exclusion from the Communist Party, he founded the French Popular Party (PPF) and took over the newspaper La Liberté, which took a stand against the Popular Front.
During the war, Doriot was a radical supporter of collaboration and contributed to the creation of the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism (LVF). He fought personally in German uniform on the Eastern Front, with the rank of lieutenant.
Perhaps I have missed something, but it was one of Mélenchon’s LFI deputies, MPs, (the Leader of the rally does not actually sit in the French Parliament) who said this, “La députée LFI Sophia Chikirou, proche de Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a publié cette semaine un message comparant le chef du PCF à Jacques Doriot, ancien communiste passé à la collaboration dans les années 1940. Invitée de LCI ce dimanche, la députée Nupes Sandrine Rousseau fustige cette déclaration.”
“The NUPES project is not quite in ruins, but the PCF summarised the situation: “All this prevents us from meeting the challenges. This prevents us from being as strong as the left could be regarding social combat. This prevents us from fighting effectively against the far right by trivialising Nazism. And it prevents us from building the rallies we need to demand peace in the Middle East. This is why we are calling for a new gathering on the left that is broader, clearer, and more useful to our common struggles.”
This story has been carried on TC, drawing on L’Humanité.
Le Monde reports, The PCF takes note of the “impasse” that the Nupes has become and calls for “a new type of union” of the left
“It is time to build a gathering that is useful, respectful of our differences and all the living forces of our society,” states a resolution from the Communist Party, adopted very widely.
A different dynamic is at work in Germany where the growth of the right-wing Alliance for Germany (AfD) threatens to breach the cordon sanitaire around the far right.
Now this is where Wright gets seriously dodgy.
“Sahra Wagenknecht, former Bundestag leader of Die Linke (the Left), and nine deputies have broken away from the party.”
……
Capitalising on Wagenknecht’s great personal popularity in Germany — 20 per cent say they would consider voting for a party led by her — the new formation is called the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance — for Reason and Fairness (In German: Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht/BSW — fur Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit).
…….
The war in Ukraine has brought some of the divisions to a head. BSW’s members say they no longer see any place for their political positions in Die Linke.
Referring to the massive February 2023 “Uprising for Peace” rally organised on Wagenknecht’s initiative, they say: “Tens of thousands gathered in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Although and precisely because around half of the population rejects the government’s military course, the country’s entire political establishment resisted and defamed the rally.
“Instead of supporting us in this dispute, the Left party leadership stood shoulder to shoulder with the other parties: they accused the initiators of the rally of being ‘open to the right’ and were thus the keyword for accusations against us.”
They accused them and they were 100% correct.
Alongside a clear anti-imperialist and anti-war stance, (note some would say an implicitly pro-Putin line) the strategic orientation of the new project is to shape a clear class challenge the growth of the right-wing AfD, which has grown particularly in the former GDR lander.
Its opponents, both in the government parties and in Die Linke itself, characterise the new formation as left-wing on economic questions and “conservative” on social questions.2
……
A bit like the Morning Star’s old mucker, now consigned to utter darkness, George Galloway and his little band, the Workers Party of Britain in fact.
It is true that it takes a detailed class position on the main economic and social questions and is highly critical of what it described as Die Linke’s focus on identity over class, but its position on immigration is more nuanced than its opponents claim.
Set in the context of “an innovative economy with fair competition,” it argues that action should be taken against growing inequality and a reliable welfare state should be created.
Sounds like a pretty similar stand to Keir Starmer…
The group’s chair Amira Mohamed Ali said: “Immigration is an enrichment if the infrastructure is not overwhelmed.”
There follows some puff on her Spiked like views on urban elites, Greens, and what one might call Woke.
In essence neither of these developments are due to either of the personalities involved. In the case of Mélenchon, a former member of the ferociously anti-communist Lambertiste Trotskyists, his political approach is notoriously confrontational.
The PCF describes him as “hegemonic,” the Socialist Party says that where once he was a factor for unity he is now the source of division.
Mélenchon, was not only a Lambertist in his youth (a cadre in fact) but on joining the Parti Socialiste in 1976, an admirer of President Mitterrand (Le Choix de l’insoumission Co-auteur :Jean-Luc Mélenchon Co-auteur :Marc Endeweld. 2016) who sees himself as a leading figure in the French Republic, one capable of creating a new Sixth Republic…
Here Wright flutters his eye-lashes at his heroine.
“Wagenknecht is a brilliant leader with a real connection to millions of voters, but the source of division in Die Linke was not her personality (although the resentment and envy was palpable) but in Die Linke’s drift away from its working-class orientation and the alienation of its base, particularly in the lander of the former socialist Germany.”
It’s the Americans again…
At the root of Europe’s present economic and political trauma, and especially the German economic crisis, is the failure of the European elite to resist the drive by US capital to frustrate any challenge to its global position.
For social democracy — competing to manage the system — the crisis is destroying their electoral base.
What distinguishes the Wagenknecht initiative is a willingness to challenge the basis of foreign policy and war while making a direct claim for working-class support on a class basis.
….
When will Galloway Return to the pages of the Morning Star?
……..
Update: this was signalled to me today:
Alexander Hurst Guardian. Friday 27th of October.
A serious intra-left backlash is brewing in France as others distance themselves from Mélenchon’s approach. “Mélenchon, the whole of the left’s problem,” declared Le Monde in an editorial. Reasonable voices on the French left know that after months of division he is no longer fit to lead them, and seem ready for this to be the last straw. The Socialist party has, at the urging of Hidalgo and others, suspended its participation in Nupes, and the Communist party has called for “a new type of union” for the left.
Mélenchon may have made a name for himself as a gifted orator in his younger days, but what is left of whoever he once was seems to consist of delusions of grandeur, petty insults and a deep bitterness that the French have overwhelmingly refused to elect him president.
Mélenchon is interested in fire, rage, revolution and fuelling a vision of France that is disconnected from reality. This has only worked to make everything more extreme, though not necessarily in Mélenchon’s favour. If the French were to find themselves facing a 2027 ballot choice between Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Le Pen would win. It would not even be close. Whether some new grouping forms or not, what’s clear is that the left must dump Mélenchon, and swiftly. For its own good, and for that of France.
Morning Star on Wagenknecht’s new party – no mention of immigration.
LEADING German left-wing politician today announced plans to form a new party.
The Morning Star makes no mention of her stand on immigration.
The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance — for Reason and Fairness Party will be formally launched in January, in time for European Parliament elections in June.
Three state elections in the east of the country will follow next autumn.
The project was launched at a time national polls show the right-wing conservatives leading and the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in second place with around 20 per cent support.
Ms Wagenknecht grew up in East Germany and joined the ruling Socialist Unity Party in 1989.
She was a prominent figure in its successor organisation and then from 2005 in the Left Party (die Linke), when eastern former communists merged with western socialists.
We then get to the bit that interests the Morning Star:
She has clashed with the party leadership repeatedly since the Ukraine war began, calling for peace negotiations and an end to arms supplies to Kiev.
Ms Wagenknecht said that with the economic sanctions against Russia “we have cut off ourselves off from cheap energy without there being viable alternatives.”
She accused Mr Scholz’s government of abandoning “the important tradition of detente” and argued that “conflicts cannot be resolved militarily — that goes for Ukraine, that goes for the Middle East and it goes for many other parts of the world.”
Another leading left MP, Sevim Dagdelen, has also joined the new party, arguing that a combative left was needed to battle the far right.
She said: “Democracy needs diversity of opinion and open debate. The government’s inability to deal with the crises of our time and the narrowing of the accepted corridor of opinion have flushed the AfD to the top.
“We want to build a new political force, a democratic voice for social justice, peace, reason and freedom.”
Ms Wagenknecht left the Left party on Monday along with Amira Mohamed Ali, the co-leader of its parliamentary group and now the chair of Ms Wagenknecht’s alliance, Ms Dagdelen and seven other MPs.
The New Statesman, has this more accurate piece but which ends in ruins….
Sahra Wagenknecht’s new left-populist party should be taken seriously
This is not a bunch of Trots but a well-prepared team with a clear agenda.
Wagenknecht wants to rebuild the old, dying left in her own image. She took nine of the party’s 38 MPs with her. She says she wants to revert to the old industrial model that has served Germany so well and reopen the pipelines that formerly carried cheap Russian gas to Germany. She opposes economic sanctions and weapons deliveries to Ukraine. She wants to cap immigration, the issue of greatest disagreement with the Left Party. She positions herself in opposition to what she calls the political representatives of the liberal metropolitan elites. Familiar as this phrase may sound, it is unusual to hear it from the left in Germany.
Wagenknecht has been compared to Rosa Luxemburg, co-founder of the German Communist Party, murdered in the Spartacist Revolution of 1919 (!!!!!). Wagenknecht, who grew up in East Germany, remained a communist all the way through unification. In the 1990s, she completed a PhD in economics, and in 2015 became co-leader of the Left Party’s parliamentary group. She is married to Oskar Lafontaine, who has the dubious distinction of having been a leader of both the Social Democrats and later the Left Party, falling out with both of them during his long career. Lafontaine currently has no role in the new party, at least not officially. There is not much glamour in German politics, but Wagenknecht and Lafontaine come as close as it gets.
The Wagenknecht phenomenon is not unique to Germany, of course. Ideas of the left and the right commingle elsewhere in Europe and the US. Marine Le Pen combines elements of French nationalism and socialism. There was an element of this in the Brexit campaign when the left vote split between the metropolitan cities and industrial towns. The so-called American New Right also combines pro-worker and anti-free market positions. Typecasting movements such as Sahra Wagenknecht’s as left or right is pointless. This is how we end up underestimating them.
To which one can only reply,
“When someone asks me whether the division between parties of the right and the left, between people of the left or the right, still has any significance, the first thing that comes to mind is that whoever asks the question is certainly not not from the left. “
Alain (real name Emile-Auguste Chartier), French journalist, essayist and philosopher, (1868-1952), Elements of a Radical Doctrine , 1925
Tendance Coatesy 