In the French Presidential elections, on Sunday, socialists are presented with two unacceptable choices. On the one hand the “fascist” Le Pen, or on the other the Thatcherite Macron, whose anti-working class, anti-immigrant policies, over the last five years, have created the conditions in which Le Pen could, once again, be in the final run-off, and whose policies continued into the next five years will only further strengthen the support for the far right. Socialists should advise workers to choose neither. Both are their immediate enemies. Instead, efforts should be put into building an effective opposition both to Le Pen, and to Macron in the weeks, months and years to come.
If the choice were between Macron and Valérie Pécresse, the Republican/Gaullist candidate, few would have difficulty in arguing for an abstention, just as, in Britain, in an election faced with only a Tory and a Liberal candidate, socialists would oppose both. But, because Le Pen is seen as a fascist, some on the Left argue, on the basis of lesser-evilism, and the principle of “my enemy's enemy is my friend” that its necessary to hold our nose, and vote for Macron. That is nonsense.
In his 1938 article, Learn To Think,Trotsky sets out why we do not adopt the position of lesser-evilism, or “my enemy's enemy is my friend”. It amounts to boycotting our own politics, and reduces us to simply placing a plus wherever our enemy places a minus sign. It allows them to dictate our politics. In that article, Trotsky argues that, in a war between fascist Italy and bourgeois-democratic France, if the Italian fascists proposed sending arms to revolutionaries in Algeria, conducting a struggle for liberation from France, Italian socialists would argue for allowing Italy to do so, even lifting any strike action, to facilitate it if necessary. Such action would undoubtedly weaken bourgeois-democratic France, and so strengthen fascist Italy. So, why would socialists argue such a course?
Firstly, we do not rely on the bourgeoisie, or its state, to resolve historical problems on our behalf. The task of defeating fascism in Italy could not be subcontracted to French democratic-imperialism, and was the responsibility of the Italian workers to bring about. Trotsky argued that, even as the Italian workers enabled the supply of weapons to Algerian revolutionaries, they would continue their own struggle against the main enemy at home, the Italian bourgeoisie, and its state. Secondly, Trotsky says, the labels "fascist" and "democratic", when it came to analysing imperialism, were irrelevant. They are simply masks that imperialism picks up and abandons depending upon which best suits its requirements at the time.
The workers have no interest in putting themselves in the camp of democratic imperialism, as against that of fascist imperialism, because rather than choosing either of these evils, the workers should choose their own independent alternative, the camp of the international proletariat and its struggle against imperialism in either of these two ephemeral guises.
And the same is true in relation to the French Presidential election. The idea that its necessary to advocate a vote for Macron as against Le Pen, is based on this same mindless lesser-evilism, and the idea that “my enemy's enemy is my friend”. Just how idiotic it is can be seen from simply asking the question of how far it goes? Its widely accepted that the candidacy of Éric Zemmour's was to the Right of Le Pen. So, had the run-off been between those two, would that mean voting for Le Pen as the lesser-evil to Zemmour? Or, put it in the other direction. Consider a vote in Britain, where there are two candidates, one from the BNP, the other from UKIP, would socialists advocate a vote for the UKIP candidate? What if the UKIP candidate was an ex BNP'er, who simply felt they had a better chance under a UKIP label. Perhaps a vote between a BNP candidate and a Tory would be an easier choice, but what, again, if the Tory was Enoch Powell, or someone with similar views, or, again, an ex BNP'er standing under a Tory flag? After all, there have been many ex members of the NF, and BNP that stood as Tory candidates.
The idea that its necessary to vote for Macron, because Le Pen is a fascist, is based on several fallacies. In the 1930's, the Stalinists adopted the Third Period sectarian madness, in which anyone who was not a member of the Communist Party was some kind of fascist. They argued that there was no real difference between a bourgeois-democratic political regime and fascism, and so it was irrelevant whether fascists triumphed, over other candidates. It meant that the Stalinists failed to form united fronts with the reformist socialists, social-democrats, and Trotskyists to fight the fascists, which facilitated the victory of the latter. Trotsky bitterly criticised the Stalinists for that sectarian madness, but that criticism has nothing to do with forming Popular Fronts, which are electoral pacts against the fascists, which is the policy that the Stalinists adopted in France and Spain after Hitler's victory, and which resulted in equal disaster to the Third Period madness!
Marxists do not at all fail to recognise the difference between a political regime of bourgeois-democracy, as against a political regime of fascism, but the question is how to fight the latter, and, as Trotsky described in his writings on fascism in the 1930's, it is not by turning ourselves into defenders of bourgeois-democracy, of bourgeois liberals, or by limiting ourselves to the methods of bourgeois-democracy, and so becoming mere parliamentary cretins. He sets it out most clearly in his Program of Action for France, written in opposition to the Stalinist advocacy of the Popular Front, as a response to the threat of fascism.
In it, the whole emphasis is on the self-activity, and self-government of workers via extra-parliamentary activity. Trotsky argues,
“We are thus firm partisans of a Workers’ and Peasants’ State, which will take the power from the exploiters. To win the majority of our working-class allies to this program is our primary aim.
Meanwhile, as long as the majority of the working class continues on the basis of bourgeois democracy, we are ready to defend it with all our forces against violent attacks from the Bonapartist and fascist bourgeoisie.
However, we demand from our class brothers who adhere to ‘democratic’ socialism that they be faithful to their ideas, that they draw inspiration from the ideas and methods not of the Third Republic but of the Convention of 1793.”
Bourgeois-democracy was not what he sought, and its defence was to be achieved not by electoral means, and shabby electoral pacts with liberals, but by the direct action of the proletariat itself, organised in factory committees, armed workers militia and so on. That is what Marxists mean when we say that we recognise the difference between fascism and bourgeois-democracy, because we also recognise, as Trotsky sets out, that the latter, as the preferred method of bourgeois rule, in so far as it necessarily fails to meet the needs of workers, and so leads to the rebellion of the workers, leads to the former, as it seeks to batter down their rebellion.
And, again, this relates to the Presidential election, because the argument that its necessary to vote for Macron as against the “fascist” Le Pen, is also based upon a fallacy, in relation to what fascism is. Fascism is a movement of the petty-bourgeoisie, of the small business class. But, for a fascist political regime to be established, the ruling class must itself ally with the petty-bourgeoisie, against the revolutionary proletariat, and do so with the full backing of the capitalist state. That is what happened in Germany, and in Italy, and in Spain etc. The fascists are mobilised as paramilitary forces to break up the organisations of the working-class. This is the real essence of fascism, and not the superficialities of whether some of its supporters run around in Nazi regalia, and have extreme nationalist and racist views.
In fact, describing Le Pen as fascist, on that basis is incorrect. Simply being racist and ultra-nationalist is not the same as being a fascist. In fact, it would be more accurate to describe Zelensky, in Ukraine, as a fascist than it is Le Pen, and yet, many of those calling for a vote for Macron to oppose Le Pen, are also “standing with” Zelensky and his regime, again illustrating the absurdities that can arise from adopting a policy of lesser-evilism, and “my enemy's enemy is my friend”. But, let's accept the common description of Le Pen as a fascist, rather than just a nasty racist and ultra-nationalist. Would an electoral victory for Le Pen, be the same thing as France then being a fascist state? To believe so is to completely fail to understand the nature both of fascism, and of the state. It is again to fall into parliamentary cretinism, and to confuse superficial appearances with underlying realities.
When, Salvador Allende's Popular Front of Stalinists and Social-Democrats won the elections in Chile, did that turn Chile into a socialist state, or workers' state? Of course not. The state is the permanent machinery of the ruling class, and acts to defend and promote the interests of that ruling class, irrespective of the vagaries of parliamentary elections, which merely provide a superficial, democratic gloss to the reality of the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, exercised via that state. That state has many ways of frustrating the actions of elected governments, wherever they contradict the interests of the ruling-class, as Trump discovered, and as Boris Johnson discovered as he has tried to implement Brexit. Ultimately, as Allende discovered, if the elected government's actions threaten the interests of the ruling class enough, then that state will simply overthrow the government, either acting alone, or in concert with others.
But, currently, its not revolutionary workers that threaten the interests of the ruling class, but various fascistic and ultranationalist and reactionary forces that represent the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie that has become strengthened over a long period, in which its numbers have grown. Brexit, and the growth of that petty-bourgeois element in the Conservative Party, as well as the Gilets Jaunes in France, along with similar trends in the US, are an indication of it. Unlike 1920's Italy, or Germany and Spain in the 1930's, when the ruling class promoted an alliance of the state with fascist paramilitary forces to beat down the workers, the capitalist state has every reason to seek ways of frustrating the fascists, and even the ultranationalists, and reactionaries such as Trump, or Le Pen.
In the last week, as opinion polls have shown the gap between Macron and Le Pen widening, financial markets have picked up. They would not do that if they saw Le Pen as their candidate. In the 1920's and 1930's, the bourgeois media fell over itself to make clear its welcome for the rise of Mussolini and Hitler, by contrast. But, what if they are wrong, and Le Pen wins, is that the catastrophe that those who promote lesser-evilism suggest? Well, it would definitely create different conditions, but look at the response in Britain, over the last week, from sections of the ruling class, and its state to Pritti Patel's suggestion that asylum seekers could be shipped off to Rwanda. In the 1920's Mussolini was able to shut down democracy, as was Hitler following the Reichstag fire, but that was in conditions where the ruling class had turned to fascism as its saviour, and where the state was allied with the fascists. Today, the opposite condition applies.
In the US, last year, the state soon slapped down the coup attempt of Trump's supporters, and has continued to chase them down since. The problem in the US is not the state, but the limp, ineffective nature of Biden and the Democrats. Neither French nor wider ruling class interests have any reason to see Le Pen undermine the EU, for example, as a result of ultranationalist agendas, and the French state would undoubtedly act to frustrate and prevent any such action by a Le Pen Presidency. After all, France has a history of elected governments being thrown out by coups, organised by the state, as with that led by DeGaulle in 1958, which created the current Fifth Republic itself. Any chance that Le Pen would be able to subvert bourgeois-democracy in France, which is what is actually required for it to become a fascist regime, as opposed to simply having fascists elected to office, is virtually impossible, let alone the resistance that would be organised to it by the French proletariat.
French workers should reject both evils. Neither Le Pen nor Macron, but a working-class struggle against both, as the starting point for rebuilding the French labour movement itself, and as a part of the development of a Europe wide movement for international socialism, and a Workers Europe.
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