A new party of the French left

IN JUNE 2007, the French Revolutionary Communist League (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, or LCR) launched an appeal for the constitution of a New Anti-Capitalist Party (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, or NPA).

In June 2008, 1,000 delegates met in Paris to give a national-level dimension to a process that started from the bottom. Beginning in November 2008, delegates from some 400 committees gathered again to discussed three documents: programmatic references, political orientation, and statutes and functioning of the NPA. Around 10,000 activists are presently engaged in the founding process of the NPA--three times more than the total membership of the LCR.

On November 6, the NPA held its first public meeting in Paris with more than 2,000 participants. If everything goes as planned, the LCR will decide its own dissolution at a congress on January 29. In the following days, January 30 and February 1, the NPA will be constituted at its first congress.

So far, so good. What is striking is how fast this overall process has proceeded. It obviously answers a political need. This need, this opportunity, has been felt for sometime already, but, in the last ten years, all previous attempts to build a qualitatively broader anti-capitalist party in France have failed. To overcome these failures, the LCR decided to try something new--so new it even never envisaged it before.

What then is "new" in the process of constitution of the New Anti-Capitalist Party?

After all other scenarios failed...

Because of the key role played by the LCR in the launching of the NPA, it maybe useful to look back on how, in the past, this organization envisaged the building of a socially rooted revolutionary party. I speak here from the experience of my "fading away" generation (the May '68 one) which is no longer "in command" in the LCR or the NPA, but whose historical legacy has to be taken into account precisely to analyze what is "new." I'll present our past "visions" in a very brief, simplified and schematic way.

My generation created new, dynamic, radical organizations in the 1960s--but in France, we remained very small. In the late '60s and early '70s, we thought we had no choice because key class confrontations were to come soon: The new revolutionary party had to be built quickly, in the heat of the crisis, through intense activism. In the middle '70s, we had to admit that the pace of history would be much slower than expected, and that the mass-based revolutionary party would have to be built in the long run.

The LCR never thought this party would simply be the result of its own quantitative growth. It had to be the outcome of a much broader process of "recomposition"--a restructuring of the left and the labor movement. We envisaged three main scenarios:

1. First schema: The radicalization of whole sections of the existing mass working-class parties (the Socialist Party, or SP, and the Communist Party, or CP). We can maybe say that this took shape in Italy with the creation of the Party of the Communist Refoundation, when the old Italian CP became a social democratic organization. But this was not the case in France. The main split from the SP (around Jean-Pierre Chevènement) became "left-nationalist" and declined, becoming irrelevant. The long-lasting crisis of the CP never gave birth to anything that looked like what happened in Italy. Our "old left" proved incapable of rejuvenating, even in part.

2. Second schema: The launching of a new radical working class party by trade unions with the participation of existing revolutionary groups. That is the "Brazilian schema"--the original foundation of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT)--or, more recently, the South Korean process: the KCTU trade union center has backed the creation of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP). In both cases, the trade union movement was still "young," having reorganized itself after a period of military dictatorship. In France, the main trade union centers (the CGT, CFDT and FO) show no such dynamism.

3. Third schema: Two or three significant political groups call together for a new party. This happened in Portugal (the Left Bloc) and Denmark (the Red-Green Alliance). It was the simplest and the most "credible" of all scenarios--but it nevertheless did not work in France. In contrast to the LCR, the two other main far left organizations coming from the 1960s radicalization have never been interested in rallying various radical forces around a common political project (unlike in Portugal, for example).

An important political opening existed nevertheless after the victory in 2005 of the "no" vote in the referendum on the draft European Union (neoliberal and militaristic) constitution. A powerful aspiration for political unity was expressed in the "left of the left"--but failed after two years of intense negotiations involving a range of currents, from the CP to the LCR.

This last attempt ended in bitterness and harsh polemics between the elements in this two-year process on who bears the responsibility for its ultimate failure. But rather than looking for culprits, it's better to reflect on why the three above-mentioned scenarios failed in France in spite of decades of successive attempts. In, once again, a very schematic way, I would like to underline the following factors.

The "old" political and trade union/labor movement no longer has the potential to rejuvenate a radical left. The social roots of the SP have changed, and its "social-liberal" orientation expresses the depth of its integration into bourgeois society. The CP has never truly addressed the issue of its Stalinist past, and now finds itself electorally and institutionally hostage to the SP. For years now, the CP has been in crisis--and it is unfortunately a "crisis without dynamism."

The three main trade union confederations (CGT, CFDT, FO) are too bureaucratized. This doesn't mean that individuals (even many of them) or local activist teams from the "old" labor movement are not joining and will not join the NPA or another radical left party. Indeed, quite a number are! But it means that, unlike what we hoped in the 1970s and 1980s, it will not be enough to "recompose" or "restructure" the traditional labor movement. It has to be remolded in a broader way–– hich is something much more complex!

The "new" trade unions (Solidaires) and social movements have a much greater radical potential. Many of their activists are reacting positively to the call for the NPA. Some members of their leaderships did engage in the attempts to build, in 2005-2007, political unity in the "left of the left."

But the relationship between social movements and political parties in France remains very uneasy. The independence of trade union and mass organizations today a very sensitive issue--and mostly for good reasons, given past experiences! Radical parties such as the NPA have to show in a consistent way their usefulness and their readiness to keep respectful relationships with "mass organizations," for new mutual dynamics to better shape the future.

It is difficult to describe what the French "left of the left" is made of, because few of its components are politically well delineated. The CP is by far its biggest component, but is in deep crisis. The LCR is by far the biggest component of the "far left" involved in unity processes. Then there are smaller political organizations, informal networks, local teams, individual activists or "personalities." As a whole, this constitutes a "milieu," broader than a coalition of parties.

There are many reasons explaining why the 2005-2006 attempts to build unity around common electoral candidatures ended in fragmentation. But there is one major political issue that has to be kept in mind here: the relationships with the Socialist Party, electoral alliances and governmental participation.

This is a key issue in a number of countries where electoral blocs and governmental participation has been, or will be, a concrete choice for the radical left: Brazil, West Bengal, Italy, Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands.

In France, the electoral system is very undemocratic: to have any chance of being elected to the parliament on the left, one needs the backing of the SP, which is not given for free. Weakened, the CP needs all the more to negotiate an agreement with the SP to save its electoral positions. Those who want to ally with the CP have to accept that. But for the LCR (and others), the task of the day is to strengthen a radical left pole that is able to embody a left-wing alternative to social-liberalism--which implies a total independence from the SP. That has been, and remains, a major political line of demarcation.

In late 2006, the LCR seemed very isolated within the "left of the left." In the presidential campaign of early 2007, Marie-George Buffet ran for the CP, Olivier Besancenot for the LCR and radical farmers' leader José Bové for some other components of the "left of the left". Besancenot's campaign was politically very dynamic, and he got more than 4 percent of the vote. There was no such dynamic in Buffet's campaign, and she got less than 2 percent--a historically low figure for the CP! Bové's campaign was politically confused and had little impact. In spite of his own personal notoriety, he hardly got more than 1 percent.

After two years of intense debates on orientation, the presidential election was a real political test for the "left of the left." It gave new responsibilities to the LCR.

The new responsibilities of the LCR

With the success of its political initiative and electoral campaign, the LCR found itself at the center stage of the "left of the left." The question was thus: What to do with this success? The LCR had the responsibility to take an initiative quickly, so that the existing momentum would not be lost, as happened in the past.

In mid-2007, even after the political test of the elections, there was no possibility to reach an agreement with other significant organizations for launching a new anti-capitalist party. With no "top-to-bottom" unity call possible, the LCR decided to give impulse to a "bottom-to-top" process--something which it never envisaged before. Everyone who was ready to participate in the creation of a new anti-capitalist party clearly independent of the SP was invited to join local committees for the NPA. The network of committees would constitute the foundation of the new party.

It was clear that there was an open political space for a radical party to emerge, one qualitatively broader than the LCR. This was in part shown by the extraordinary popularity of Olivier Besancenot.

Olivier is a very good candidate and spokesperson. This is not mainly a "media" phenomenon. Being a postman, he is not seen as a professional politician, but as a "co-worker"--"one of us." He is young, and the youth can also identify with him. Last but not the least, he is politically very consistent: when at 27 years old, he made his first run in a presidential campaign in 2002, he was totally unknown but already a member of the political bureau of the LCR. In TV forums, he usually smashed professional politicians politically, as well as members of the government. People love it!

One reason for which the LCR has been able to take the initiative of launching the NPA is often overlooked. Its leadership has been renewed. Today, all the historical "figures" of the LCR have stepped out of the political bureau (but remain active!), and the national leadership is now mostly composed of cadres in their 30s or 40s. This seems not to be the case for most other organizations. It is a very important issue because of the radical change of political generations that has occurred since the 1990s.

On one hand, the LCR renewed its membership and cadre network. On the other, the LCR remains an organization framed by its origins--the 1960s-1970s experience. So it both can and must give impulse to the creation of a new party, one rooted in the present generation's outlook.

The NPA as a new party

For the LCR, the aim is not only to build a bigger, stronger party. It is to help the creation of a truly new one. There has been a radical change of period with the disintegration of USSR and with capitalist globalization. And there has been a radical shift in generation: the activists of the present don't have the same references and background of historical experiences as the "1968" generation. The combination of the two radical changes--period and generation--has deep consequences in the way politics is lived.

For sure, it is important to keep alive the political experience of the past decades, including the many lessons of the past century (such as imperialism and Stalinism). How then to build anew without losing our past?

By passing the legacy of the LCR on to a new party. By also bringing into this new party the best of other revolutionary traditions of the past century--from various Marxist or libertarian traditions, from feminist and eco-socialist movements, etc. By giving to the new party the social roots of trained mass cadres, while broadening its social implantation with the recent experience of the global justice movement and the wave of immigrants' resistance in the suburbs. By also allowing the new party to speak the political language of the present generation.

The will to build--with others--a broader anti-capitalist party is not new for the LCR. The LCR has aimed at this for several decades! What is new is the decision to give impulse to a "bottom-to-top" process and, most importantly, to fully integrate the change of period and generation in the vision of the new party.

Unfortunately, the LCR is presently the only "big" (everything is relative) component of the "left of the left" engaged in the NPA process. The other political groups concerned are much smaller. The danger, then, was that the LCR would remain "the party within the party" after the foundation of the NPA.

To avoid that, drastic decisions were taken. LCR members are usually in minority in steering bodies of the de facto existing NPA. And the LCR should dissolve itself in the days before the founding congress of the NPA.

The NPA has to become a political and social melting pot to shape its own identity. It is presently easy to reach political agreements within the NPA process, and there is nothing divisive today like the "nature of USSR" (to take an example) was for the "left of the left" in the 1970s. But there are strategic issues with few concrete answers, such as how to disarm the bourgeoisie. The NPA will have to consolidate its programmatic foundations through its own experience. It will take time. The road ahead is unknown.

The decision to dissolve the LCR is, of course, a risky one. But it would be even more risky not to take this risk. We have to seize the present opportunity: to miss it would probably be very costly for the whole "left of the left." The NPA must not be seen as--and must not be--an "enlarged LCR," but a qualitatively newer party.

The process is well engaged. Thousands of people who were never member of a party before are getting involved. Many from the CP or other organizations are joining too, as well as grassroots activists. If the launching of the NPA at the end of January 2009 is a success, some political components, which are presently not ready to unite with the LCR, may change their mind.

But it may be better to wait for the end of January 2009 and the founding congress of the NPA to evaluate the long way we'll have come--and the long way still ahead.