Archive for the ‘French Left’ Category
Split in the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA).
Split or Exclusion?
Scission ou exclusion ? Le NPA secoué par une importante crise interne
Le Monde carries this story on the events.
A moins d’un an de la présidentielle, la formation d’extrême gauche se voit amputée d’une de ses plus importantes tendances.
It’s a split that has been brewing for several months. Since last Thursday, June 10 in the evening, the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA, heir to the Revolutionary Communist League, of which Olivier Besancenot is the figurehead) has lost one of its opposition tendencies, the Revolutionary Communist Current – Permanent revolution (left wing, 11.05% at the last congress in 2018). Talking about this subject involves the use of convoluted formulations. Indeed, Permanent Revolution asserts in a text that 296 activists were “excluded” from the organisation. This, the NPA vigorously denies . “No exclusion was pronounced, neither individual nor collective, specifies Julien Salingue, member of the party leadership who recognises internal tensions. It is the departure of a current which stages this decision. “
The most obvious point is that the group which has left is part of a rival International.
Le réseau est impulsé par les différentes organisations qui font partie de la Fraction Trotskyste pour la Quatrième Internationale: le Parti des Travailleurs Socialistes (PTS) en Argentine, le Mouvement Révolutionnaire des Travailleurs (MRT) au Brésil, le Parti des Travailleurs Révolutionnaires (PTR) au Chili, le Mouvement des Travailleurs Socialistes (MTS) au Mexique, la Ligue Ouvrière Révolutionnaire (LOR-CI) en Bolivie, le Courant Révolutionnaire des Travailleurs (CRT) dans l’Etat Espagnol, le Courant Communiste Révolutionnaire (CCR) en France, l’Organisation Révolutionnaire Internationaliste (RIO) en Allemagne, LeftVoice aux Etats-Unis, la Ligue des Travailleurs pour le Socialisme (LTS) au Vénézuela, le Courant des Travailleurs Socialistes (CTS) en Uruguay. Des organisations auxquelles s’ajoutent la Fraction Internationaliste Révolutionnaire (FIR) en Italie, le Courant Socialiste des Travailleurs (CST) au Pérou et l’Organisation Socialiste au Costa Rica qui ont pris part à la dernière conférence internationale organisée en 2018 à Buenos Aires.
This is a “post-Moreno’ (a current of South American Trotskyism) whose politics seem aimed to restore Trotskyist orthodoxy. For those with very strong sectarian stomachs this is their take on this: Who was Nahuel Moreno? Gabriela Liszt.
Le Monde also notes,
Permanent Revolution has its own leader, Anasse Kazib. This railway worker unionised with SUD-Rail is a media personality, a supporter of the movement of “Gilets Jaunces”, he was a time contributor to the Grandes Gueules programme on RMC radio. He is also close to QG-Le media libre , launched by journalist Aude Lancelin.
Finally the group that has left has some pretty out-of-kilter politics which aim to create new mass Revolutionary Workers’ Party. Many comment that this looks a deliberate entry-followed by manufactured split, to create a new groupuscule.
Statement (France): No one has been excluded from the NPA, which will make its decisions on the presidential elections at the end of June [after the departure of the CCR-Permanent Revolution]
In a text made public on Thursday 10 June [1], the CCR-Permanent Revolution group announced its departure from the NPA. The NPA takes note of this decision, and does not give up its project to address all those who suffer from an increasingly violent and unjust social order, and want to come together to act, collectively, to overthrow it.
Concerning the departure of the CCR-Permanent Revolution, some clarifications are necessary. Contrary to what is stated in their text, no one has been excluded from the NPA, neither individually nor collectively. It is indeed a departure: until the publication of this text of rupture, the members of the CCR-Permanent Revolution who pay dues to the NPA had the same status as other NPA activists, could participate in the democratic process underway to decide our orientation for the presidential election, and their representatives in the national leadership bodies could join all the meetings and participate in decision-making.
The departure of the CCR-Permanent Revolution is in fact the consequence of the failure of this group to impose on the NPA the presidential candidacy of Anasse Kazib. This “pre-candidacy”, publicly announced on 4 April on social networks and in a few articles, was done in a way that broke with the way the NPA works and the way it makes decisions about our presidential candidacies. These have always been the result of democratic discussions within the NPA, organized around questions of political orientation and profile, and not of personalized “pre-campaigns” – and a fortiori conducted outside the organization.
This “pre-candidature”, articulated to the project of launching a “Revolutionary Workers’ Party”, has convinced no one in the NPA, except the members of the CCR-Permanent Revolution. By staging their alleged “exclusion” today, they want to cast suspicion on the NPA and preventively delegitimize its choices for 2022.
Aware of its internal isolation and its failure to impose its party project and its candidate, the CCR-Permanent Revolution has chosen to withdraw from the NPA even before the internal democratic consultation takes place. Duly noted.
The NPA will, as planned, take its decisions concerning the presidential elections at a national conference on 26 and 27 June. Between now and then, all its members are invited to express their opinion, in the framework of democratic discussions and votes, on the orientation and profile of our organization for 2022.
At the end of this discussion/decision process, the NPA will announce, after the weekend of 26 and 27 June, its choices for the presidential elections, on the occasion of which we intend to defend a programme of social, ecological and democratic urgency, and carry the perspective of a revolutionary break with the capitalist system.
NPA, Montreuil, 11 June 2021.
Excluded from the NPA, We Begin the Process of Building a New Revolutionary Organization: Statement of 296 NPA Activists
This declaration addresses the de facto expulsion from the organization of its 296 signers, militants of the New Anticapitalist Party in France from 34 of the party’s committees. For the militants of Révolution Permanente and the CCR, the Trotskyist Fraction – Fourth International group that is a tendency within the NPA, it opens a new stage in the fight to build a revolutionary workers party in France.
Translator’s Note: This statement references several organizations. The LCR (Ligue communiste révolutionnaire, or Revolutionary Communist League), was the French section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International until it abolished itself in February 2009 to form the NPA. La France Insoumise (Unbowed France or Unsubmissive France) is a social-democratic populist party founded in 2016 by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle) is a French Trotskyist party that traces its origins back to 1939.
A few days before the national conference that is supposed to spell out the orientation of the New Anticapitalist Party and nominate a candidate for the next presidential election, we are forced to take note of our de facto expulsion from this organization — one that some of us have helped to build for more than 12 years. As is often the case in the history of political expulsions, those who implement them often fail to call them what they are, using formulations such as “separation” (rather than expulsion) or claiming those expelled “have put themselves outside the party.” Nevertheless, the reality remains: this has been a long process of expulsion orchestrated for more than a year, from start to finish, by the central core of the leadership majority. There are mounds of written evidence — motions of exclusion, internal declarations signed by members of this leadership, decisions by the mediation commission that they flouted, and so on — that we will gladly provide upon request.
Beyond the fantasized tale and the slanders of the NPA leadership majority, our expulsion responds to two very concrete political problems. The first is that the historical leadership of the NPA, heir to what remained of the leadership of the former LCR, has become more and more of a minority within the organization and was in danger of losing total control at the next party congress. The second is that this same leadership has committed itself to a turn to the right, toward a policy of compromise with the institutional Left, of which the lists for the regional elections in New Aquitaine and Occitania are a preview; the existence of a strong left wing that opposes the NPA becoming a sort of branch of La France Insoumise constitutes an obstacle. These two factors led the leadership first to postpone the congress indefinitely and then to make the national conference on the presidential elections an instrument of the scission by suppressing the rights of about 25 percent of the party’s militants.
Just as it is ridiculous to pretend that we were not members of the NPA when we had representation on all the national leadership bodies and intervened in the name of the NPA in meetings and even in the traditional NPA-Lutte Ouvrière debate during the last Fête de Lutte ouvrière, it is certainly the case that we had important disagreements both on the balance sheet of the initial NPA project as well as on how to overcome the crisis in which the organization has been immersed for a decade. However, it was not inevitable that the NPA would shrink — little by little with each congress — to the point today where it has barely 10 percent of the number of members at the party’s founding, and three times fewer than the number of members of the LCR at the time of its dissolution. It is also a fact that the party, socio-economically, organizes many more teachers and civil servants than workers and other people from working-class neighborhoods, including immigrants.
Since 2016 — and this context is important — we have witnessed an important wave of class struggle and the emergence of a new militant generation, overflowing with radicalism and searching for a political alternative to represent those radical politics. The Yellow Vests movement and its revolutionary chants, and the strike against the pension reform in the winter of 2019–2020, are illustrations. Throughout these years in the NPA, we have defended and tried at our scale to demonstrate the idea that asserting a revolutionary profile and making bold interventions into the main phenomena of the class struggle would make it possible to attract to the far left some portion of these new militants. around an asserted revolutionary profile and a bold intervention in the main phenomena of the class struggle, it was possible to attract to the far left a part of these new militants. That, we said, was the path out of the party’s crisis—not the so-called unitary policies aimed at a so-called “Left of the Left” that was increasingly out of touch with the interests of the workers and the poor.
Through these activities, many of us were won to revolutionary ideas by the comrades of Révolution Permanente. But once we joined the NPA, we were not welcomed as we had expected; instead, they tried to keep us from voting for the congress, and then for the national conference, claiming that we were not real NPA militants. Internally, they denigrated the RATP–SNCF coordinating committee and then the strike at Grandpuits. Then they launched the campaign against the proposal for the presidential candidacy of a worker comrade, from an immigrant background, recognized for his role in the class struggle, calling the candidacy of Anasse “an attack against the NPA.”
Having reached this point, we no longer see any possibility that the NPA can reconstitute itself as an effective tool that serves the interests of our class. We tried until the end to transform the party in order to arrive at some form of revolutionary refoundation, something that can be done only on the basis of a serious assessment of the failure of the initial project and of the immense difficulty this organization has had being anything other than a commentator about the great processes of the class struggle that have unfolded. Despite that this possibility has been taken away from us today by our expulsion, we in no way renounce the objective of rebuilding a revolutionary Left that is equal to the experiences of the class struggle of the last few years — and above all, that is up to the challenges that are before us in this new phase of international capitalist crisis.
We call on all comrades who share this assessment to join us in the battle that is just beginning.
First published in French on June 10 in Révolution Permanente, where a full list of the signers can be found.
Translation by Scott Cooper
By contrast.
NPA (April) on the initial decision by the above faction to announce a candidacy for the French Presidential elections.
Publié le Lundi 5 avril 2021 à 21h41.
Anasse Kazib, member of the NPA and of the “CCR-Permanent Revolution” announced, on social networks, his “pre-candidacy” for the presidential election of 2022. This announcement, which had actually been scheduled for several several days, was therefore made outside any decision-making framework of the organisation.
Marches to Defend Freedom and Against the Far-Right held across France.
For our Freedoms Against the Ideas of the Far-right.
Zemmour, Marine Le Pen and Royalists have never represented French Values.
Marches for Liberty and against the far right took place across France this Saturday. The slogan, launched by the political, associative and trade union left: denounce “attacks on freedoms” which according to the organisers come as a result of the rise of the extreme right and “liberticidal” laws enacted by President Macron. .
Left parties, trade unions and civil society associations protest across France.
The MP for La France insoumise (LFI, Eric Coquerel was the co-ordinator with the spokesperson of Générations (led by Benoît Hamon) Thomas Portes. The list of groups backing the protests is very long.
While not singing the appeal itself (stemming from differences with the organisers over the recent police demonstration) the Socialist Party and the Communist Party announced their participation. The Greens who also took part regretted the timing – one week before regional elections.
The day was a great succeess.
There were a few minor incidents. as in when Jean–Luc Mélenchon got flour chucked on him by somebody who claims to be a ‘sovereigntist’.
Turns out the flour man is a far right activist:
Kettling (la Nasse) in Nantes.
12th of June Marches for Our Freedoms Against the Far Right in France.
Appel à manifester «pour les libertés et contre les idées d’extrême droite» le 12 juin
Libération
For several months now, we have observed an alarming political and social climate.
To make alliances with the extreme right or to take up their ideas is no longer a taboo. Racist and sexist words and acts in the workplace and in daily life are spreading. Attacks on social rights and freedoms are on the rise. In this political, economic, social and health context, injustices explode and generate strong social misery.
“faced with this climate of hatred, racism and attacks on individual and collective freedoms, we have collectively decided to organise on Saturday June 12 a first major national day of demonstration and mobilizations which will take place locally ”.
Just to prove the first sentence former Socialist PM Manuel Valls signed this open letter with figures from the far right only a couple of weeks ago: Valls pas gêné de signer une tribune avec l’extrême droite
They included “l’intellectuelle britannique figure de l’extrême droite post 11-septembre Bat Ye’or ou encore l’avocat très très à droite Gilles-William Goldnadel (more of an ultra-conservative pro Israel supporter who writes for papers like le Figaro, roughly The Daily Telegraph/Times but certainly not somebody a left of centre person would associate with) .
Bat Ye’or!
Her books Eurabia and Europe, Globalization, and the Coming of the Universal Caliphate are about the alleged relationship from the 1970s onwards between the European Union (previously the European Economic Community) and the Arab states. Ye’or argues that Islam, anti-americanism and antisemitism hold sway over European culture and politics as a result of collaboration between radical Arabs and Muslims on one hand and fascists, socialists, Nazis, and
Nazis, and antisemitic rulers of Europe on the other.[3]
In an Haaretz profile, Adi Schwartz called her book on Eurabia Protocols of the Elders of Brussells.
Plans for the protests already making serious waves in France.
Map of Marches already planned across France: la carte des rassemblements
Support from (present list):
Syndicats : CGT, FSU, Union syndicale Solidaires, Syndicat des Avocats De France, Syndicat de la Magistrature, UNEF (Union nationale des Étudiants de France), UNL (Union nationale des Lycéens), Fidl, MNL (Mouvement national Lycéen), FSE (Fédération Syndicale Etudiante, l’Alternative, Confédération Paysanne, USP (Union Syndicale de la Psychiatrie), CNT-SO, CGT-Police, Résilience France, SNMPMI (Syndicat National des Médecins
de Protection Maternelle et Infantile)
Associations et collectifs : Attac, LDH, FCPE, Fondation Copernic, Oxfam, Alternatiba, Amis de la terre, Résilience commune, DAL, CNL (Confédération nationale du Logement), Comité justice pour ibo, Emancipation collective, Rencontre des justices, Coexister, CRAN, SOS Racisme, QNQF (Quartiers nord, Quartiers forts Marseille) , Observatoire National contre l’extrême droite, MRAP, association ViSA, Femmes égalité, Collectif National pour les Droits des Femmes, Collectif féministe Les Rosies, Les effronté.e.s, JOC (Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne) , AFPS, Conseil démocratique Kurde France, FTCR, CRLDHT, UTAC, France Amérique Latine, La Jeune Garde (Lyon, Strasbourg et Paris), Université Ouverte, Unis pour le climat et la biodiversité, collectif Police Contre la Prohibition, Youth For Climate, Changer de Cap, Compagnie Jolie Môme, Mémoire Traumatique et Victimologie, Héro.ïnes95, Union des Femmes Socialistes de Turquie, La Maison des Femmes de Montreuil, CNAJEP, Les États généraux des migrations, la Libre Pensée, Les Francas
Médias : Regards, L’Humanité, Politis, Contretemps, Le Media, Blast
Organisations politiques : ENSEMBLE !, Génération.s, La France Insoumise, EELV, GDS, Nouveaux Démocrates, NPA, Place Publique, le Parti de Gauche, Nouvelle Donne, les jeunes écologistes, MJCF (Mouvement des Jeunes Communistes), UEC, PEPS, Jeunes Génération.s, Rassemblement Communiste, UCL (Union Communiste Libertaire), PCOF, MdP (Mouvement des progressistes)
