Posts Tagged ‘Jean-Luc Mélenchon’
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.
***
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.”
Condemned for violence against his Spouse, La France insoumise deputy Adrien Quatennens plans return to National Assembly.
Feminist Protest at Quatennens Court Judgement.
Adrien Quatennens is a long term ally of Jean-Luc Mélenchon (he joined the Parti de Gauche, PG, in 2013, and has campaigned for La France insoumise since its creation in 2016). He has been an MP for the LFI since 2017. Named coordinateur de l’équipe opérationnelle of the Party-Movement-Rally in 2019 Quatennens took an important post. Since he left this position a few months ago, after accusations of violence agianst his spouse, been occupied by Manuel Bompard, at present the head, (unelected but with the chief’s blessing, “Like Napoleon when he was crowned, he took the crown from the hands of the pope to crown himself.” as an internal critic has said ), of Mélenchon’s organisation.
That is to say Quatennens is more than just a LFI activist with a seat in the French National Assembly and a run-of-the-mill profile within the larger left bloc (NUPES).
The MP for a part of Lille in the North of France has been in the news for some months now. Accused of violence against his partner the charges ended in the Courts. The Guardian carried the initial story in September, “Dismay after French politicians defend MP who admitted slapping wife. Wife of Adrien Quatennens, a senior politician in radical left LFI party, reported him to police”. In November Le Monde published this article. “LFI party plunged deeper into crisis as wife of French MP Quatennens accuses him of ‘years of abuse. In fresh revelations, Céline Quatennens has accused her husband Adrien of ‘physical and emotional abuse’ when the party had been planning his return to the Assemblée National.”
Quatennens was in Court this week. He received a four months suspended prison sentence.
The Deputy has announced that he intends to return to the National Assembly in January. To the press, radio and television, he has even said that he had been subjected to a media “lynching” (“lynchage médiatique”).
Today the leader of the French Communist Party has stated that they consider anybody with these court convictions should resign from public office:
The Feminist collective Nous Toutes has announced that it will hold a public protest when he comes back.
On Thursday Le Monde devotes its principal Editorial to Quatennens and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s mangement of the affair.
La Nupes piégée par Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Sentenced on Tuesday, December 13, to a four-month suspended prison sentence for acts of violence committed against his wife, with whom he is in the process of divorcing, the deputy from the North was expelled from his group for four months. His return, to party parliamentary benches, scheduled in April, has been met with incomprehension by feminists who would have liked to see him leave the National Assembly. While LFI claims to be at the forefront of the fight against violence against women, the deputy has, on the contrary, refused to resign. He even says he is ready to return to the Hemicycle in January , even if it means sitting among the non-registered (note, that is as ‘non-party’). This has touched the left’s values and principles. Unease has spread to all its ranks.
Le Monde, noting that Quatennens is a protégé of Mélenchon, at a time when the 71 year old leader of LFI has reorganised the party-movement-rally to ensure his own influence is perpetuated through the person of Bompard (see above) makes it look all the worse. The Editorial comments that, “This has more to do with the practices of a Trotskyist groupuscule than the of a party fully integrated into the parliamentary game with aspirations to win power democratically.” (Il relève davantage des pratiques d’un groupuscule trotskiste que des mœurs d’un parti pleinement inséré dans le jeu parlementaire et aspirant démocratiquement au pouvoir.)
Criticisms of this behaviour, the Daily suggests, will add to internal attempts to escape the influence of the Mélenchon leadership. These come from figures such as François Ruffin, and Clémentine Autain, both of whom have called for democratic structures inside LFI. It extends to within the wider NUPES bloc, by the Greens, who have just elected, democratically (in contrast, it hardly needs saying, with LFI’s opaque procedures), Marine Tondelier as their National Secretary , and the Communists headed by Fabien Roussel. Le Monde concludes that while there is as yet no announcement of a process to chose Mélenchon’s successor a different path to that laid down by the ‘left populist’ leader is emerging, while the left as a whole remains divided.
In Le Monde alone there is so much material on this affair and the present problems of La France insoumise that only a selection can be given:
(Today) « La France insoumise est moins un parti-mouvement qu’un parti personnel » Rémi Lefebvre
“L’organisation de La France insoumise permet à un petit groupe de personnes de concentrer le pouvoir” Interview with Manuel Cervera-Marzal (author of Le populisme de gauche : sociologie de la France insoumise. 2021. Reviewed and frequently cited on Tendance Coatesy).
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:
Tendance Coatesy 