Election campaigns and antifascism in France: a response to Denis Godard

Issue: 185

John Mullen

Denis Godard’s article in International Socialism 184 aims to assess the situation in France today and sketch out the tasks of the left.1 It also presents the history of the Popular Front in France in the 1930s, intending to draw lessons for our situation. However, the article omits to assess the principal forces on the French left and contains a series of errors. Since prospects and tasks in France are of importance to anti-capitalists around the world, I am writing a response to Denis’s take on the situation, a take which one can grasp more fully in the various editorials of his group Autonomie de classe (Class Autonomy).2 To keep this response relatively short, I will only speak of today’s situation and not of any historical parallel.

The 2024 elections

Denis insists that “elections in summer 2024 have not distanced the [Rassemblement National] from the prospect of power”.3 This is simply untrue. Without the formation of the left electoral alliance, we would have a fascist government in France today. Indeed, 27 major opinion polls predicted a fascist government.

The prospect of such a government was blocked by the most dynamic election campaign for many decades. Trade unions, feminist organisations, political parties, charities, academic associations, university councils, singers, artists, scientists, publishers, athletes, and huge numbers of workers and students took part. No doubt over 100,000 new activists participated (over 50,000 new people asked to join the radical left organisation La France Insoumise).

They were right to fight. Even a minority fascist government would have wielded frightening power. With a fascist interior minister, who would have discretion to appoint regional police chiefs, violent racists in the police force would have had an absolute field day. With a fascist education minister, Muslims, radicals, queers and trans people would have been in immediate danger. The election results were, then, an obvious tactical success. Denis is wrong to mock revolutionary activist Olivier Besancenot, who spoke of a victory. Besancenot’s exact words included:

[It was] an authentic victory, which we clawed out with our teeth. It was a reversal of the trend… Now we mustn’t fool ourselves, this victory could remain short-lived and fleeting… The far right is still here, very much so, and so is the danger of neofascism.4

When addressing the masses that campaigned, half of them for the first time, we cannot begin by saying: “You were wrong to do that!” However, Denis suggests that the electoral alliance was a mistake and that we can only support anti-fascists who “question state institutions”.5

Denis’s group’s position is clearer in other editorials. They write:

In contrast to what was built during the parliamentary elections, we think we will not oppose the RN and its fascist project by an electoral alliance. The political solutions against the RN will only be those carried by the organisation of the majority of us through concrete actions aiming at preventing the construction of a fascist movement.6

The editorial goes on to call for “a class-based anti-fascism”, while, last June, the group’s slogan was: “For a Popular Front from Below!”
It is true that the left here in France is insufficiently conscious of the importance of direct mass action against the RN. Back in the 1990s, a national campaign, The Manifesto Against the National Front (the previous name of the RN), using mass tactics of “democratic harassment” was very effective and led to a split in the National Front. Since then, little has been done systematically at national level.

In fact, RN public meetings are rare and are often the object of only local anti-fascist mobilisations, supported but not really prioritised by left organisations. On 10 November 2024, in Tonneins, in the southwest of France, a town of some 10,000 inhabitants, Jordan Bardella, fascist president of the RN, spoke in a hall that holds 2,000 people: Anti-fascists rallied 150 yards away. At the end of October, in Vertou, a town of 25,000 people near Nantes, Sebastien Chenu, vice president of the RN was opposed by a few hundred marchers, as was the RN meeting in Le Havre in June. Such initiatives need to be systematic and supported nationally. Sadly, outside the city of Nice on the south coast, Bardella and Marine Le Pen were able to hold a meeting of 5,000 supporters in September with minimal opposition.

The people who are likely to be persuaded to build anti-fascist direct action rallies will no doubt be those very people who were leafletting railway stations, building demonstrations and going door to door on council estates last June. The enormous antifascist campaign this summer deserves praise. Certainly, as Denis says, people concentrated on “the need to convince voters” and on the idea that the ten and a half million people who voted RN are not all committed fascists.7 But surely this is not controversial. Convincing voters has always been part of our antifascist tradition. I remember, many years ago in Britain, going door-to-door with the Anti Nazi League to try to convince voters not to vote for the British National Party. In 2015, Stand Up to Racism produced a poster with simply the words “use your vote to stop Nazi candidates”.8

Le Pen has put elections at the very centre of her strategy. She does not try to organise mass demonstrations, and the RN only had a couple of public meetings during the election campaign, focusing instead on mass media appearances. Her plan is that positions in the state machine will allow her later to build the mass street-fighting gangs she needs. For the moment, in most towns, the RN has little by way of party structure, so opposing her at elections is crucial. When such opposition throws tens of thousands of people into what is often their first antifascist activity, Marxists should be delighted.

What is the meaning of the New Popular Front?

Since Denis does not name or analyse the principal actors on the left, he cannot provide a sufficient understanding of what is to be done. He refers only to the (fragile) electoral alliance, the New Popular Front, which is made up of four or five extremely different political organisations. It is also, incidentally, not a “popular front” in the sense we Marxists usually use the term, because only parties of the left are part of the alliance.

The key actors are the Socialist Party (PS), the Communist Party (PCF) and the radical left France Insoumise (FI; France in Revolt).

First, the PS. Reduced in national elections to only a few percent, due to anger at their neoliberal attacks while in government, they are now rebuilding the organisation. They still control 162 town councils across the country, including Paris, Nantes, Lille, Rennes and Nancy. In any case, their brand of market-loving social democracy is not going to disappear any time soon. The PS leadership is divided between the right wing, whose main enemy is Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the FI, and the—temporarily dominant—left wing, who considers that a swing against neoliberalism is essential to regain legitimacy. 

Denis is wrong to say that the New Popular Front programme is “compatible with the right wing of the PS”.9 Indeed, if it were, why did it inspire many tens of thousands of new activists? Why would Besancenot’s New Anticapitalist Party support it? They have their faults, but they are not turncoats. Any reader can judge for themselves whether the programme is compatible with the social-liberal right wing: it is available online, and automatic translation will give the gist.10 The programme is of course a compromise, a minimum programme, but it includes 150 reforms—including stopping arming Israel, raising the minimum wage by 14 percent and all public sector wages and social benefits by 10 percent, freezing food prices, building council houses and disbanding the most violent police units.

The right wing of the PS would certainly be stunned to hear that this
programme was compatible with its priorities, since it has been working night and day to break up the left alliance and smash the programme in question. According to economists on the right of the PS, this programme “was hijacked by France Insoumise”. Another PS leader was quoted in the same issue of Le Point as saying, “We have become Melenchon’s hostages! What he wants is revolution!”.11 On 3 September, the entire right wing of the PS National Committee voted to abandon the New Popular Front prime ministerial candidate, Lucie Castets, and put forward Bernard Cazeneuve, a figure very much compatible with Macronism. This would have meant the end of the New Popular Front and its programme. Yet, the party’s right lost the national committee vote, 33 votes to 38.

The second force in the New Popular Front is the PCF, led by the right-leaning Fabien Roussel, who is hoping the left alliance will not last long. His move to the right is so stark that Annie Ernaux, left-wing Nobel prize winner for literature, recently quipped: “If Fabien Roussel is a communist, I am a nun!”.12 An ageing party, having lost the initiative to the FI, the PCF has for years been searching for political space to the right of the FI.

Finally, and most importantly, there are the new left reformists of the FI. Macron and the political right, assisted by sections of the PS and PCF, are running a smear campaign against its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, along the lines of the one which helped bring down Jeremy Corbyn in Britain. They are doing this for a reason. The emergence of the FI over the past eight years represents a remarkable success for mass left reformism. This is an organisation that secured more than 7.5 million votes in 2022, and that speaks of “a citizen’s revolution” and “spectacular change”.13 Its leader, Mélenchon, calls it “an anti-capitalist force, aiming at ecological planning of the economy”.14 Tens of thousands of people have flocked to the movement over the last couple of months. The FI summer school in August had 116 meetings and more than 5,000 participants. It has set up regular educational courses, including “introduction to Marxism” classes, and is taking the accumulation of cadres seriously.

FI was the driving force behind the coalition that pushed back the fascists—and it is the force attracting the best young anti-capitalist activists now.15 The organisation has succeeded in destroying the reigning “there is no alternative to neoliberalism” atmosphere. It has brought opposition to Islamophobia into the mainstream of left politics, from where it had been absent for several decades, and it is organisationally independent of the old reformist left (unlike, say, mass Corbynism in Britain).16 The FI leadership has held firm on Palestine and on police violence. Two of its leaders, Mathilde Panot and Rima Hassan, have been accused of the crime of “supporting terrorism”. A far-right police trade union organised a demonstration in front of the FI headquarters some time back. In short, the FI is the centre of gravity of radical left politics.

Its emergence is the result of two phenomena. There is the generalisation of political class consciousness in France after the mass political strikes of 1995, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2019 and 2023 (against attacks on pensions or on labour protection
legislation) and the popular revolts of 2005, 2018 and last year (against police violence or rural poverty). Then, there is the weakness and division of the revolutionary left, which was unable to recruit massively from this rising consciousness. The result is a mass left reformism, seen as an open-ended determination to rethink the whole of society. Seeing tens of thousands of new activists flood in to defend a “citizens’ revolution” and “spectacular change” should delight every Marxist, even if these are not Marxist slogans.

Obviously, we have plenty of big disagreements with the leadership of the FI, about both curent politics (France’s role in world imperialism and the use of left patriotism, for example) and longer-term perspectives (how the forces of profit smash radical left governments, for example). These should be the basis for energetic fraternal debate. However, by not mentioning the FI and instead acting as if the fragile New Popular Front is an undifferentiated mass, Denis does a disservice to Marxists.

Four months after the French election, the situation is very fluid. We have a weak right-wing government, generally supported by RN MPs, and it is not yet clear what issue will spark the next big fightback. The new left reformism, which is attracting millions, has severe limitations, but relating to these people and acting together whenever possible is central.


John Mullen has been active as a Marxist in the Paris region since the 1980s, and is a member of the France Insoumise action group in Montreuil. His website is randombolshevik.org.


Notes

1 Godard, 2024.

2 See their website www.autonomiedeclasse.org

3 Godard, 2024.

4 See NPA—L’Anticapitaliste, 2024

5 Godard, 2024.

6 See the editorial from Autonomie de classe dated 8 October 2024.

7 Godard, 2024.

8 The poster is still available here: www.standuptoracism.org.uk/wp-content2015/uploads/2024/06/UseVoteStopNazis_A3.pdf

9 Godard, 2024.

10 The programme can be downloaded here: https://assets.nationbuilder.com/nouveaufrontpopulaire/pages/1/attachments/original/1719575111/PROGRAMME_FRONT_POPULAIRE_2806.pdf


References

Alternatives Economiques, 2022, “Entretien Jean-Luc Mélenchon: ‘Je veux un changement spectaculaire’ (24 May), www.alternatives-economiques.fr/jean-luc-melenchon-veux-un-changement-spectaculaire/00103440

Godard, Denis, 2024, “The Popular Front in France: No Solution to Fascism”, International Socialism 184 (autumn), https://isj.org.uk/the-popular-front-in-france-no-solution-to-fascism

Initiative Communiste, 2017, “La France Insoumise, le capitalisme et l’Europe” (29 November), https://www.initiative-communiste.fr/articles/europe-capital/france-insoumise-capitalisme-leurope-analyse-discours-de-jlm-samedi-25-novembre-2017

Jaffard, Sylvestre, 2024, “The French Elections and the Defeat of the Far Right”, Tempest(10 August), https://tempestmag.org/2024/08/the-french-elections-and-the-defeat-of-the-far-right

Mullen, John, 2024, “The Post-Election Challenge in France”, Tempest (11 October), https://tempestmag.org/2024/10/post-election-challenge-in-france

NPA – L’Anticapitaliste, 2024, “Victoire du Front populaire : maintenant, s’organiser”, Youtube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEdp5ak38e4

R, Théophraste, 2022, “Annie Ernaux ne perd rien pour attendre” (10 October), www.legrandsoir.info/annie-ernaux-ne-perd-rien-pour-attendre.html

Schuck, Nathalie, 2024, “La gauche dans les griffes du cannibale Mélenchon”, Le Point (27 August)